


too merry the ascent

by riptidewaves



Series: wake everyone up (shake it off!) [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, Anxiety Attacks, Love Triangles, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mutual Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, childhood friends nahyuck, so slow burn it's glacial
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2020-08-20 04:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riptidewaves/pseuds/riptidewaves
Summary: The world changed, just a little bit, when the asteroid appeared unceremoniously one day, without any warning whatsoever. They only had a week left before it collides with the planet Earth, authorities say. Mark had, for all intents and purposes, accepted this fact easily along with the rest of the world.or, alternatively: the very vaguely x-men based au where everyone's just trying their best





	1. of course the end of the world is happening on a monday

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone! ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿
> 
> this has been sitting in my mind for quite some time now, so i decided to just get it started and hopefully finish it! it's gonna be a very, very, very long process but i hope i'll be able to make it enjoyable for you! 
> 
> honestly i had a very fun time planning this out, doing background research, and outlining it. anyway!! enough about me, i hope you guys like it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday, na jaemin best boy ٩(♡ε♡ )۶

The day Mark saw the most beautiful boy he had ever seen also happened to be the day the end of the world was announced.

It went like this:

It was a dreary Monday morning when Mark, passing by the very inconvenient convenience store near his university which only ever carried cigarettes and energy drinks, had coincidentally seen the news on the small TV the convenience store owner had perched on the counter. 

"The world will end in four days time," the news anchor on TV had, very diplomatically, informed them. She had on a red suit the same color as her lipstick. She seemed to be wearing a smug grin at the fact that she was able to live until the end of the world. 

"_What_," the store owner said, aghast. He whacked the side of the TV, which, in turn, hissed static at him. "_No! _ Fridays are when my favorite drama airs! The world _ can't _end! Absolutely not! I forbid it!" 

"Um," Mark had said, meekly placing his purchase (one canned instant coffee) on the counter, "I'd like to buy this, please."

The store owner, wide-eyed (an unusual state for him), rung his purchases up quickly. "Thanks, come again," he croaked (also unusual behavior for him; usually he was in a constant state of disinterest and only spoke in mono-syllables to show just how much disinterest he had for the customer), whacking the TV again. 

Mark, already scurrying towards the exit, let out a hasty "thanks" as he goes through a mental checklist over all the assignments he should finish by tonight. End of the world be damned, his assignments were due tonight and the end of the world doesn't happen until _ four _ days later. He’ll deal with the mass extinction of the earth's population then. Or, well, maybe just chill with the angels above once the apocalypse comes through. Mark thinks he's been a pretty decent person to warrant exclusive heavenly access...at least, he hopes. Maybe he should take out the rosary he has beneath his pillow tonight. Anyway, all of that comes _after_ his assignments. 

He chugs the rest of the canned coffee, grimacing. He doesn't really buy it for the caffeine content, more due to the fact that it was so disgusting, drinking it induces all of his senses being woken up at the same time, repulsed by his absolutely revolting choice of drink. Which works out just as well; he can ignore his tastebuds for the time-being (actually, he's pretty sure he killed off all of his remaining tastebuds. Everything tastes like cardboard now). And with that, all thoughts of the apocalypse were quickly forgotten in Mark Lee's very tired and very disgusted brain. 

It's only much later, when he collapses on his bed, absolutely exhausted from using up all of his brain cells in completing all of his assignments and submitting them ten minutes before the deadline, when he gets reminded of the end of the world:

It comes in the form of a boy around his age lying right next to him, sleeping peacefully. He was also very naked, and that's when Mark’s brain screeches to a halt, all synapses and neurons converging into one chaotic chunk of fried brain mass that unanimously decided that, yep, the end of the world was_ definitely _ coming, before promptly shutting down.

"Are you God," he wonders out loud. The boy doesn't stir, just kind of snores a bit, and snuggles closer to him in response. He takes that as a no.

(Mark would also like to add that he doesn't even have blankets at the moment because, frankly, he hasn't done his laundry in over a month and his blankets were getting kind of disgusting, so he opted to just sleep without blankets instead.)

(What he's _ really _ trying to say is that there were absolutely no layers between him and this boy, just the baggy sweater he's been wearing for three consecutive days and his sweatpants.)

The boy (_naked_ boy, his brain comes back alive momentarily to supply this very humbling observation) is ... actually very cute. He had fire-engine red hair that was all mussed up from sleep, smooth skin that seemed to go on forever_—_an endless expanse of skin that seemed to radiate a warmth that couldn't simply be attributed to body heat. Moles were sprinkled unto his skin, kind of like an afterthought, like, in a self-serving ice cream bistro where you sprinkle toppings (marshmallows, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate tidbits, all the good stuff) on an ice cream that signalled the finished design of an absolute masterpiece. Yeah, Mark supposes, kind of like that. 

Also, on another note, the boy seemed to be sparkling?? 

Mark watches him for a bit, wary, and maybe scooting away farther. It wasn't written in any kind of rule book, but in _his _rule book, sparkling people are not to be trusted. Well, save for people who actually do use body glitter. And maybe Beyoncé, because, duh, Beyoncé. Actually, you know what, that's a pretty stupid rule to make, Mark decides. People can decide what to do with their bodies, what the hell. If they wanted to sparkle, then they shall.

The boy, oblivious to his internal moral dilemma, just continues sleeping.

Now, somewhere in the back of Mark's mind, it occurs to him that this was a very dangerous situation to be in. _ Who _ exactly breaks into a student's tiny apartment just to strip naked and crash on their beds? Only weirdos do, and Mark really should listen to the Dongyoung-esque voice in his head repeatedly telling him to “pick up his damn phone and call the police immediately, really, Mark, this is no time to be cutely malfunctioning, you are in _ grave _ danger.”

For a while, he entertains the thought, hand already reaching for his phone. 

_ 119_, he would dial, and when the emergency operator answers, he would say something along the lines of, "hello, yes, sorry to bother you, haha, I'm sure you probably have better things to do than answer my call, haha, I'm really sorry, this is probably stupid, haha, anyway there's a naked boy in my bed and I don't know how he got in? He probably broke into my apartment and was planning on murdering me but maybe he was too tired so he laid down for a bit and then fell asleep? Anyway, it’s really no big deal, I’m sorry for troubling you. I wanted to go down like this anyway, haha."

He can already imagine the humiliating laughter rumbling from the other end of the phone call.

Mark internally debates over the pros and cons of calling 119 again:

_ Pros: _

  * the adults get to handle this problem
  * he won't be putting himself in danger
  * Dongyoung would be proud of him

_ Cons: _

  * he hates phone calls with the passion of a hundred millennials passionately hating the sound of their own voices on the phone (especially if it’s calls with registered professionals)
  * police investigations will probably go through his stuff and he won’t be getting any studying done in at least two weeks
  * Johnny would hear about this and congratulate him on _finally _getting someone in his bed
  * phone calls

And so with the cons outnumbering the pros, Mark comes to a decision. After all, the other boy didn't look to be too strong; Mark took taekwondo classes when he was a kid and he can still remember some stuff ... maybe. He remembers his psychology professor saying something about how learned motor movements are stored in the basal ganglia, and the brain never, _ ever, _forgets implicit memories like that. If the boy proved to be dangerous, he could just take him down with his repressed taekwondo skills and dial 119. _Adrenaline makes the brain work faster_, his psychology professor once supplied, before throwing plastic spiders on a nearby student's desk. That student had been Mark. He would like to suppress this particular memory, thank you very much. 

(He never sat in the front row again after that.)

After making sure he had his phone securely in his hand for quick dialling, he shakily reaches over the boy's (naked!!!!!) shoulder, poking him three times. _Poke, poke, poke. _Oh, his skin was velvety soft. The boy grumbles a bit, but doesn't open his eyes (did Mark mention how his skin seemed to be sparkling? He'd like to mention it again). 

More determined now, Mark scoots just a tad closer and shakes the boy's shoulder none too gently. "Hey, wake up."

At the sound of his voice, the boy's eyes flutter open, and Mark catches a glimpse of a sleepy pair of eyes_—_also sparkling, _of-freaking-course—_that seemed to contain all of the untold secrets in the universe, somehow compressing it into human orbs that glimmered with the constellations of archaic history (now where the fuck did all of _that _come from, Mark wonders), before the boy hooks a leg over his back, and in one fluid motion, executes a body throw that would have made Mark's taekwondo instructor cry tears of joy. Mark lets out a soft “_hmph” _as his back collides, very painfully, with the wooden floors of his apartment. 

"Oh, _ hey_," the boy, the very strange, very naked, very sparkly boy, says simply, hands casually holding Mark's above his head in a tight grip that ensured no chance of escape. Mark was effectively pinned to the floor by a beautiful naked stranger (Mark's frontal lobe says: this is not a badly-filmed pornographic film, just a harmless observation). Damn, this guy had some serious upper arm strength. His phone clatters to the floor a few feet from him. Distantly, Mark hears Dongyoung's screeches of despair inside his head as he gazes up at the boy above him, who leisurely stares back, smiling sweetly. 

"Mark," the boy croons, his voice sending tingles up Mark's spine. It's a very nice voice, he thinks, somewhat hysterically; coated in something syrupy and sweet, like honey and milk, something so sweet, but so dangerous when consumed in large, tempting quantities that lead to sweet, _sweet_ intoxication (where_ is all this poetic shit coming from_). "Hyung, did you miss me?"

Wait. How did he know his name?

"How... know… my name?" Mark squeaks. Why say lot word when few words do trick.

The boy huffs out a laugh and adjusts his position so that he ... was essentially straddling him, almost. One of his legs (long, slender, very pretty legs, the primitive yet weirdly poetic side of Mark’s brain observes) slipped between his legs, one toned thigh straying dangerously close to his groin. Mark freezes, his entire body going ramrod-straight. _ Did he mention the boy was naked? _The warmth exuding from the boy’s body carried heat like no other, it was almost like he was a humanoid sun.

"Of course I know your name," the boy _ purrs_. He leans in closer until their faces were mere breaths away. From this close, Mark could see the various moles dotting his face, almost like a constellation. "_Mark hyung_," he says again, this time softer, with something like affection laced in the saccharine tones of his voice. Inching closer, he slowly closes his eyes and_—_

Then, quite suddenly, the mysterious boy is ripped away from him. The hands that held his arms over his head in a hulk-like grip disappeared, as well as the weight over him. 

"What the_ fuck _ is going on," a familiar voice growls from somewhere overhead.

Mark scrambles to his feet immediately, his taekwondo experience _ finally _ coming in handy as he dives to the side of the bed for his discarded phone. Rapidly, he taps on it and almost cries in relief at the sweet, godly pixelated screen displaying _ 119\. _ Just as he was about to tap on the _ call _ icon, the phone is mercilessly wrenched away from his clammy hands. 

"Mark Lee, I swear to god, if you move a single muscle, I am going to fling you out of that window," that same voice threatens. 

Mark looks up.

And sees… the same naked boy, but this time significantly clothed? And also sporting a head of ashy curls that fell over his head in waves instead of the fire-engine red locks of hair? Both of them had the exact same features, except for the height and the hair and the clothing and the sparkly attribute. The new one sported a black sweater that almost covered his entire torso, with a ruffled polo peeking out from the collar and the sleeves. 

He, unlike his naked counterpart, did _ not _sparkle.

(For some reason, a wave of sadness washes over him as he looks at this boy, coupled with... feelings of happiness, nostalgia, and... longing?)

This clothed newcomer glowers at him. He had the sparkly one under headlock, in a grip so tight the sparkly boy periodically lets out little winces everytime he makes slight movements. He studies the room, taking everything in rapid detail. He adjusts his arm a little; an arm that could probably break all of the bones in Mark’s body if he so much as twitched. 

Mark twitches nervously. 

Immediately, the boy’s eyes snap back to his supine form on the floor, eyes narrowing as he meets Mark’s eyes. This boy's eyes, decisively not sparkling in any kind of way, still held that same feeling of secrecy, of untold confessions and conspiratorial whispers exchanged under the moonlight. Beautiful, but remarkably damaged. 

“Um,” Mark begins helplessly, “hello?”

There’s a short pause. 

Then, both of them (the naked and the clothed; alternatively: the sparkly and the non-sparkly one) snort in unison. 

“Mark Lee,” Not Sparkly intones, his voice sending shivers down his spine. There was something strange about the way he said his name, like there was a plethora of emotions he hid in those two words that denoted his very existence. His lips quirk up in a mysterious smile. “You’re coming with me.”

“Um,” Mark says again.

Just then, a swirling vortex appears by the boy’s side, looking like it was ripped across time and space. He’d seen movies, of course, of portals that rewrote the time and space continuum, of ripples that appeared in dimensions, but still, the vortex that appeared was nothing like it was in the movies at all. Instead of being a dark mass of unknown spatial mass that probably would have given most physicists heart attacks for breaking the laws of physics, it was… for lack of a better word, space-y looking. 

Not Sparkly heaves a sigh and, hefting his naked counterpart over his shoulder, gestures for Mark to follow. “If you want your questions answered, just follow me, okay?”

And with that, the boy, with a flutter of his clothes and one last wink from Sparkly (haha, if you say it slowly, it sounds like 'Spark Lee', like Mark's last name), steps over to the vortex and disappears. 

And Mark? Well, Mark does want to have his questions answered, and he’s, like, eighty percent sure that he’s actually dreaming all of this up, like maybe it’s all just a fever dream brought on by his excessive studying, so he, blindly and stupidly, follows. 

*

The next thing he knows, he’s in a fairytale.

Or, well, it _ looks _ like something out of a fairytale. They were in a castle, from the looks of it. It was a pretty big space, with intricate patterns drawn in on the marble floors, all polished to the point of pristine cleanliness, with rich, velvety curtains hung over the large windows, done much more for decoration than anything else, as moonlight still gently streams in from outside. Chandeliers, honest to god _chandeliers—_hang on, were those made of crystals, holy shit_—_ covered the ceiling, which was so high up, Mark figures they could probably fit an entire circus in here.

And in the midst of it all, were five people all peering into his face, all way too close for comfort.

“Oh, look, it’s Mark hyung.”

“Wow, who let the hags in…”

“MAAAAARK.”

Mark slowly sits up (why was he on the floor again?). All five pairs of eyeballs tracked his movements. Their faces, though unfamiliar, sends pangs of something unidentifiable in his chest somehow. It was the same thing with the earlier sparkly duo, with something akin to wonder starting to bloom in his chest as he takes in their faces, their features, the way their voices sounded. It was like discovering a long-lost favorite toy accidentally placed in a hidden room that he had no access to for the longest time. The same sense of nostalgia and joy. 

“Hi,” he says slowly, wincing. Apparently traveling via vortexes as a mode of transportation was murder on his lower back. “Um. Where am I? Am I being kidnapped? How do you know my name?”

One of them, a slender boy with a beret on his head, glares over at the side, where the sparkly duo were dusting themselves off, or in this case, Not Spark Lee was shrugging off his jacket to drape it over Spark Lee’s naked person. “Donghyuck, did you even tell him anything?”

Not Spark Lee aka ‘Donghyuck’ (the name brings a pang of sadness to Mark’s chest for some reason) shakes his head as he tugs on his sparkly red-headed doppelgänger. “I’ll let Jaemin do that,” he says, twisting his lips in thought, “I still have to take care of this guy here, and find out what’s really going on,” with that, he shirks off to a hallway with Spark Lee in tow, “ugh, why are you _ sparkling_, stop it.” 

“Ehhh, but I’m not really good at introductions,” another boy with platinum blond locks and, curiously enough, blue fringes, sighs as soon as the two hobble out of earshot. “Chenle, you do it.”

“I’m Chinese, so my Korean isn’t good,” a boy with vibrant orange hair, his cheeks all bunched up from all the smiling he was doing. “Jeno, you do it.”

"Why don't we let Mark hyung do it," another boy, whose eyes were endearingly closed in half-moon crescents, suggests.

“Chenle, you _literally_ spent half of your life here, your Korean is flawless, and Jaemin, you… you are _ literally _ a telepath,” another says, releasing a long-suffering sigh, massaging his temples. "And Mark hyung _literally _had his memories altered, he doesn't even know what's going on! Look at him!"

They look at him. Mark raises a tentative hand to wave at them. They wave back.

"You said a lot of 'literally' there."

"Yeah, what do _we _know about literal and figurative things? We don't know anything in this world."

"I wish that asteroid could come right about now... right here at this very spot."

For some reason, fondness erupts from Mark’s chest as he watches the commotion in front of him. They dissolve into light bickering then, and even as confusion settles into the haze of Mark’s brain, he can’t help but feel that, somehow, this, all of _ this _was… comforting and familiar. He glances at the direction where Donghyuck and his twin went to, vaguely thinking something along the lines of puzzle pieces.

“Okay, _ okay_, you dumbasses, be quiet!” the boy with the beret from earlier bursts out, his tiny frame somehow making all of the others shrink into submission. “Jaemin,” he says to the blond and blue-fringed guy, who smiles back serenely, “Jaemin, can you please just… do your thing. Please, I am begging you.”

“I do like having people beg for me,” Jaemin agrees pleasantly, to which all of the others howl, shriek, and cringe. Ignoring all of the ruckus, he strides over to Mark, who had, up until that point, been just standing there, mind completely blank, no thoughts, head empty, but heart surprisingly filled with emotions he couldn’t quite identify.

Jaemin smiles at him reassuringly. “Hiya, Markie. It’s good to see you.”

“He...hello." Mark is absolutely cowed. Here he was, in a ratty sweater and sweatpants, looking all the worse for wear, surrounded by the general air of luxury this place seemed to exude. Maybe he should start doing his laundry more often.

“Before I start, do you have any questions you wanna ask? Something you’ve been dying to get off of your chest?” 

Mark wracks his brain. There were _ a lot _of questions and none of them made any sense if he ever spoke them out loud, but the one question that’s been on the front of his mind, the one question that’s been burning at the tip of his tongue ever since he’d seen the naked beauty was: “do… I know you? All of you?”

At his question, all five of them grew quiet, somber. A silence washed over the room at large, a stark contrast to how they were just a few moments ago before Mark opened his big fat mouth. 

He starts to stutter, “I_—_I’m sorry, I didn’t mean_—_"

“Yeah, you do know us,” a voice echoes from the back of the room. All of them turn to see Donghyuck, casually strolling in with all the air of a man who had viciously wrestled with a bear prior to this, judging from his rumpled clothing and hair in disarray. “Or, well, you did,” he amends, “sorry I took so long, my stupid twin_—_who calls himself _ Haechan__—_put up one hell of a fight when I tried to get him to sleep.”

Donghyuck smiles at him, something nostalgic and bittersweet, and which, in turn, made Mark’s insides churn with the sudden inexplicable desire to do something completely random, like hold his hand. “You were our leader."

“Leader?”

“That’s right,” beret guy nods, “Donghyuck, any luck with your better twin?”

“No,” Donghyuck sighs, “he has no idea what’s going on either_—__hey_, did you just call him the better twin?”

“I was about to say evil twin but between the two of you… he’s definitely the nicer one.”

“Renjun,” Donghyuck smiles sweetly, “_perish_.”

“Technically, all of humankind is a whole kind of suffering on its own, so me being here and living with all of you is a form of eternal punishment, so, yeah, technically this _ is _ me perishing.”

“I’m just gonna do it,” Jaemin announces to no one in particular, as they start squabbling. He steps closer to Mark, “this won’t hurt, okay? Just relax and don’t think about anything at all.”

And, well, because Mark is an awkward being with all sorts of nervous adverse reactions to being told a specific thing, well, his thoughts suddenly take a left turn, from head empty lane to highway of intrusive and mundane thoughts. Suddenly, everything he’s ever seen and done over the past week comes to mind, and now his mind is thrumming with activity.

Beside him, he could hear Jaemin’s warm chuckle. 

Suddenly, a soothing presence fills his mind, kind of like one of those efficascent oils his grandmother used to chase him around the house with whenever he complains about slight aches in his body. It was like a huge soothing balm spread over his entire brain. 

And then_—_a series of images pass through his brain, some… memories? Memories he didn’t know he had came trickling through his brain, like a fountain of water springing up, up, up, from out of nowhere, and then coming back down into the stream of his consciousness. 

Images after images pile up, superimposing on one another, at times interconnecting with some. It was like there was a key being slotted into an area of his brain, gently pushing it in and prodding it open. Memories rushed forth, clamoring to get outside, as they have for some time now. 

He remembers applying for SM Academy, one of the most prestigious performing arts academies all over the world, with a passing rate of 1%. He remembers getting the acceptance letter in his mail one day, and celebrating with his family. He remembers finding out about mutants, a sub-portion of the human population possessing a mutant gene that allows them to develop superhuman powers. 

He remembers meeting them: Donghyuck, Jisung, Renjun, Jeno, Jaemin, and then Chenle. He remembers sunny afternoons spent lounging on plushy cushions, talking about nothing. He remembers warm laughter. He remembers loneliness, being alone, ostracized even. 

Mark barely remembers closing his eyes, but the next thing he knows, Jaemin’s stepping back and the soothing presence at the back of his mind disappears.

“Okay, I think I’ve got the gist of what’s happening,” Jaemin nods to himself, throwing one last smile at Mark’s dazed face. 

The five of them huddle closer, eager to hear what he has to say. 

“I returned some of Mark’s memories, just a little bit though because the human brain is kind of unpredictable when a bunch of memories just come out of nowhere,” Jaemin explains, “it’s better to do it one at a time, at a rate where his brain can deal with the shock. So, for now, all he remembers is half of our first year.”

“Makes sense,” Renjun mutters.

“That’s really smart, hyung,” Jisung says, face twisted in shock, “really out of character for you.”

Without looking, Jaemin swipes at the boy’s head, to which the other boy dodges easily, continuing, “and, well, we already expected this, but Mark unlocked his power. And maybe, just maybe, caused a bunch of stuff to get weird. Like the apocalypse for instance.”

“Oh, you mean the asteroid scheduled to hit us in like a week?” Chenle guesses, “Mark hyung made that? Cool.”

A chorus of “_cool_”s and “_nice_”s fill the group. 

“Yeah, turns out he had a horrible week at school,” Jaemin says easily, “so. Asteroid hitting the earth and causing mass extinction for the human race was the answer. A bit too dramatic, but, well, we do have our days. Except, y'know, most people usually just mope around or write in their journals instead of destroying the world.”

“And that other guy who calls himself Haechan?”

“Oh, him? You’re gonna _ love _this, Donghyuck,” Jaemin laughs gleefully, “so, a couple days ago, our young Mark here had this very interesting dream…”

“??”

“A _ very _ interesting dream where he met this very, ah, _ beautiful _ boy, with shockingly crimson hair that fell unto his face like droplets of the finest wine there is. A shade that was, funnily enough, your exact hair color two years ago!”

Donghyuck, apparently catching on, covers his face and lets out an anguished wail. “_Fuuuuuuuck _ you_, _ Nana."

“That _ is _ exactly what he did to our precious Mark here!” Jaemin continues delightedly, “according to the dream, the two of them met, and over a nice, romantic candle-lit dinner with_—_with floating mini suns revolving around them, they, uh, did what Romeo and Juliet could not. Seems like they were having a dinner somewhere in the galaxy, ah, which perfectly encapsulates the galaxy hidden in the beautiful red-headed boy’s eyes, of course.”

Donghyuck lets out a mortified screech that could soften the hearts of even the most embarrassed of Victorian women who had their ankles unfairly exposed, while Jisung mumbles to himself: “but didn’t Romeo and Juliet actually _do_ it…”

Markdidn’t get it.

“You had a sexual fantasy that involved Donghyuck,” Renjun, seeing the look of utter confusion on his face, translates, “your horniness triggered the seal that locked your powers in and now it’s going off.”

“In more romantic and more rated G words, because there are _ children _around,” Jaemin chimes in, sending a reproachful look over at Renjun’s way, “your longing for our handsome chocoball over here manifested so powerfully in your dream that you essentially created ‘Haechan’.”

Mark stays still, letting the words wash over him. In the background, he could hear the rest of them getting into fights on how far exactly did Romeo and Juliet get before they died: “they spent the _ night _ together, act three started with the two of them _ in bed_. Of course they had sex!” “I know. I played the plant by their bed.”

“Mark?” he hears someone from somewhere behind him. Jeno comes into focus, smiling, eyes crinkling into half-moons as he offers him a batch of cookies. 

“Oh,” Mark blinks, taking one and mournfully biting on it. His head hurts quite a bit without Jaemin's soothing mind balm. “Thanks, man.”

“I imagine this has been a day for you,” Jeno says consolingly, taking a cookie too and munching on it, sending cookie crumbs all over his torso. He pays it no mind. “Sometimes when I get too stressed by something, I eat.” 

“Oh,” Mark says again, smiling, taking another cookie, “yeah. It helps.”

They were silent for a while, taking their time with the cookies, munching peacefully, as the rest of the group dissolved into warfare as they argued over the poetic context of Shakespearean plays. Renjun seemed to be shaking a fiery fist (literally, the guy was on _ fire_) at Donghyuck’s way; Chenle was egging him on; Jaemin was pinching and cooing at Jisung’s cheeks, looking for all the world like a mother who carried him in his belly for nine months.

It was quiet for a while between the two of them, just them sitting quietly, taking one cookie after another, the periodic sounds of chewing drowned out by the all-out brawl that broke out right in front of them: three of them were floating now; Jisung was holding Donghyuck out like one might hold an angry, hissy cat. 

“It’s nice to have you back, hyung,” Jeno says softly, turning to him and letting a smile grace his features. “We really missed you. It hasn’t been the same since.”

Mark ducks his head down, suddenly shy. The unidentifiable feeling was back in his chest once again, and though he couldn’t place it for the longest of time, he could tell by now. It was in the familiarity of the surroundings, the looks on everyone’s faces, even the bickering over every little thing that somehow made his mind go blank from stress. 

The ache of coming back home, that’s what it was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **(1) Renjun: Pyrokinesis**  
The ability to control, manipulate, generate, and absorb fire and heat.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: Donghyuck once asked if he could absorb heat from the sun ("like a plant photosynthesizing!"), which led to Donghyuck giving him plant gifts so he could have "more friends". It has been their tradition for years. Most of the plants in their greenhouse were Donghyuck's various gifts to him._
> 
> **(2) Jeno: Molecular Acceleration**  
The power to take the potential energy stored in an object and convert it to kinetic energy thus “charging” that item with explosive results.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: Jisung still doesn't quite get how Jeno's power works. He hopes to eventually understand it one day._
> 
> **(3) Jaemin: Telekinesis, Telepathy**  
The ability to move and manipulate objects with only the power of their mind. He also has the ability to read minds, communicate mentally and project thoughts in to other's minds, as well as an array of telepathic powers that allows him to roam the states of consciousness.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: Jisung wants to be able to record his dreams so he once asked Jaemin to monitor his dream. What Jaemin saw that night convinced him that Jisung's mind is a land no man should ever venture into._
> 
> **(4) Donghyuck: Shape-shifting**  
The ability to alter the formation of one's cells at will, allowing him to look and sound like an exact duplicate of any living being, including height, weight, and built.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: Renjun has hypothesized that at least two of Jeno's continuously multiplying stray cats were Donghyuck in cat forms. Donghyuck has declined to comment on this hypothesis._
> 
> **(5) Chenle: Super Acute Auditory and Vocal Senses**  
The ability to perceive any vibration in the air in all frequency ranges, even frequencies not accessible to the normal human ear. His superhumanly powerful lungs, throat, and vocal cords can produce a sonic scream for various effects.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: Jeno once caught Chenle animatedly playing with a bat he found outside the dorms. Chenle claims he was "talking" wth the bat, and the bat felt very grumpy at being disturbed, so he eventually left it alone._
> 
> **(6) Jisung: Superhuman strength, enhanced stamina**  
Posseses a body that is much stronger and tougher than humans. As of now, he can comfortably lift up to 50 tons (45359.2 kg; 100000 lbs.)
> 
> _DREAM TMI: measurements were taken by a slightly distracted Chenle, so please bear that in mind._


	2. mark expresses his wish to photosynthesize

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mark gets some answers, and then some

Mark opens his eyes to gentle sunlight streaming in from the glass ceiling, where the brilliant blue skies shine overhead. One particular cloud takes the shape of a frog with a top hat, holding a cane. A jetplane jets through—a little distance from the cloud—leaving behind little tendrils of irritated clouds that grumble at the disturbance. 

“It was all a dream, huh,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. He happily gazes upwards anyway. Maybe he was still in the dream. His alarm hadn't sounded yet and it's been a long time since he went out and looked at the clouds like this. 

“Nah,” a voice says to his right. Mark startles, turning. Na Jaemin sits beside him, dressed in a tailored suit and sipping a cup of coffee, decidedly on the earthly ground (literally. They were sitting on the ground, actual soil and dirt) and not floating somewhere in the clouds with the fancy frog cloud. Beside him was a large tumbler where he must have some more coffee. Mark wonders if he just goes around and carries teacups everywhere so he can pour it from his tumbler and sip on it like a sophisticated, well-mannered young man sharply dressed for the occasion. 

Well. A sophisticated, well-mannered young man who carries around teacups for no good reason other than looking like a sophisticated, well-mannered young man. 

Jaemin smiles at him, though a twinkle in his eyes tells Mark that he caught exactly what he was thinking moments ago. Right, telepath. “It’s not a dream. We were having our tea party and you just dozed off, so rude!” he adds, pouting.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mark hastily wipes the traces of sleep in his eyes. He sits up, blinking at his surroundings.

It’s now Tuesday, the day after that remarkable apocalyptic Monday. After feeding him with more cookies and warm milk (Chenle insisted on a particular brand of milk that he says is absolutely The Best Milk in the world), they’d sent him back into his apartment, since he still had lectures to attend in his university the next day. 

They’d promised to answer more of his questions tomorrow (“_You look like you’re the living proof of hell, hyung!” Chenle chirped, “except you look more dead!” "Thanks, Chenle..."_). After he finishes his classes, he has to come over to the… mansion, castle, whatever it was. Donghyuck would come fetch him, they said. 

Truth be told, he was still a little nervous being near Donghyuck. The others didn’t say much, and Donghyuck himself didn’t talk to him as often as the others, but Mark could tell there was some history there, some unresolved tension that could probably explain the range of emotions he feels whenever he looks at the other boy. 

So he attended all of his lectures in a sort of daze, barely even registering the drones of the professors. It's fine, he'd already studied today's materials ahead of time. All he had to do was, _sigh_, double his study time so he could catch up and have the opportunity to study in advance.

Finally, he found himself trudging back to his apartment, already thinking about the instant ramen he was going to heat up—after a quick nap, of course. But first he had to set up six alarms, just in case his "nap" turned to a 10-hour comatose state. It happens more frequently than he would care to admit.

He was quite surprised to see Donghyuck already there, lounging on his couch and playing something on his phone. As soon as he caught sight of him, he pocketed his phone, offered him a sort of lazy salute, and grabbed his arm. 

Together, they stepped through the vortex again. This time, when they arrived at their destination, Mark managed to land on his own two feet instead of flopping on the ground like the primitive side of his brain so badly wanted to. He felt a little proud of himself for this (Mark: 1, Mark's primitive area of the brain: 0). Donghyuck dropped his arm immediately, as though he couldn’t bear to keep touching him any longer. Which, to be honest, kinda hurt. Mark ignored the lingering warmth on his arm, staring instead at his retreating figure waltzing away. 

And well, Jaemin eventually found him there, standing in the exact same spot he was standing in yesterday. Jaemin clucked his tongue in vague disapproval, muttered something about “overly dramatic geminis” and, clutching his hand in his, led him to a vast greenhouse located in the back of the...what even _is _this place? A mansion? A luxury hotel? Mark doesn't really know, but he pokes some sculptures and some paintings along the way. They felt very...expensive. And lovingly crafted. He supposes the artists must have invested so much time on these works of art, and would have some very choice words to say to a kid who pokes at them. Mark sticks his hands down his pockets after the thought crosses his mind. _Sorry_, he thinks, to no one in particular.

So. There they were, in present time. Sitting inside a greenhouse and staring blankly into space while Jaemin drank coffee in slow, measured sips. At some point, Mark must have dozed off. 

They’d spent quite a few minutes re-capping the memories of yesterday night. 

“So, what you’re saying is,” Mark says, “that I’m a mutant. You’re also a mutant.”

“We’re all mutants,” Jaemin confirms, curling his hand around the tumbler to pour himself another cup. It was his seventh cup, and that's not even counting the number of cups he'd finished while Mark was napping. He's starting to get slightly worried. The strong aroma wafting from the coffee let him know that, like everything else in this...luxury house, it was made from expensive coffee beans. This, coming from a guy who exclusively drank shitty canned coffee and who knew absolutely nothing about the delicacies of coffee. The coffee just oozed expensiveness...and bitterness. It was so dark, darker even than the americanos he sometimes gets at Starbucks. 

Anyway. Right. Mutant business. “And we all study in SM Academy, one of the _ best _ schools in the country for the performing arts, _ and _which is also a school for mutants.”

“Right,” Jaemin nods, beaming at him.

"I don't get it, SM's really, really famous. I think someone would have gotten wind that all they were accepting were mutants, instead of the regular... humans," Mark trails off. "Which means someone would have, I don't know, stormed the place and locked everyone up in experimentation labs? I mean," Mark flounders, suddenly remembering that he's talking to a mutant, "At least, at least that's what I see in movies!" 

Jaemin chuckles warmly. "I get it, Mark. That's like, the number one fear instilled in us, to be mere lab experiments whose sole existence is akin to that of a lab rat. The danger is still ever-present. But," he lowers his voice suddenly, making Mark strain his neck to hear his next words, "you have to know that the school director is a very powerful and influential man. He has connections. Important connections that place him in a very high place. Plus, there are safety precautions that older mutants have placed in the school which has protected it for years. As far as I know, there hasn't been an infiltration in, like, ever."

"They may be really shitty people, but they're people who know how to do their jobs very well," Jaemin continues, a dark edge creeping into his tone. "Of course, there have been a few...incidents. But they were swiftly taken care of. And by swiftly, I mean those people were never heard of ever again."

"Oh," Mark says in a small voice. _What do you say to a person who looks like he's in a mood? Also, this place is starting to creep him out. _"S... sorry...?"

Jaemin blinks, the darkness in his eyes suddenly gone, like it had never been there in the first place. "Sorry? What are you sorry for?"

"For, uh, having to be stuck with me asking question after question."

"Awww, Markie~" 

Jaemin looks as though he wants to give Mark a gold star. A little gold star sticker along with a ‘well done’ pat on the head. Mark could definitely use a little gold star sticker and a pat on his head, he thinks, a little glumly.

As if he read his mind (oh right, telepath), Jaemin reaches over and gives him five consecutive pats on the head, adding in a little head scratch here and there. “Good boy,” he cooes, petting his hair. 

“_Okay,_” Mark wheezes, curling in on himself and feeling himself flush. He clears his throat. “Okay,” he repeats, for good measure. Just to establish control. Like a lion occasionally letting out a roar to establish dominance and then lying down somewhere while the other lionesses do all the work. Completely unnecessary, but good for the ego. “So, uh, SM Academy is where I met you guys, and something happened that made me lose my memories? Because I don’t remember a single thing about, well, any of that.”

An indistinguishable shadow passes over Jaemin’s face. “Yes,” he says finally, voice steady. 

A heavy silence fell over them then, not unlike what happened last night when Mark had asked if they knew him, and just a few moments ago. It was really strange.... and also kind of frustrating? So far, everything's just been so vague and mysterious, and for the life of him, he really cannot grasp the situation. Sure, his memories were apparently gone, and he apparently had some kind of past associated with _SM Academy of Performing Arts_, which, to be honest, is kind of unbelievable on its own. He studied at his dream school? _And remembered none of it?_ His inner ten-year old self is telling him to throw a tantrum right then and there and demand to have _all_ of his memories back, but...

Looking at Jaemin's face, he doesn't feel like he can do that. Everybody has been nothing but kind (okay, _somewhat_ kind) to him, and he can tell they're all just trying their best, but he still feels a surge of frustration building in the back of his throat, the same feeling he gets whenever he can't understand an equation in class, the concept just refusing to make sense in his brain.

“So, um,” Mark starts to say, before Jaemin shushes him with a finger.

“Look, hyung,” he whispers, pointing at something. Mark cranes his head to see what it was. 

A butterfly, perched on a colorful flower.

“Woah,” Mark grins, maybe a little too eagerly, but...it really has been a while since he'd spent some time outside, okay. “A butterfly!”

“A butterfly,” Jaemin repeats serenely. 

The butterfly in question, perhaps growing a bit self-conscious because of the two boys squatting on the dirt and staring so intently at it, flutters its wings and flies off. 

“That was cool.”

“It was,” Jaemin agrees. 

Silence again. Mark fidgets uncomfortably. 

“Uh,” he tries, “is there anything else you wanted to say to me?”

Jaemin takes a long sip of his coffee. “I’m supposed to retrieve your memories and answer your questions, but it's okay if you want to nap a bit more. This is my favorite place to nap. Well, I try to nap anyways. Mostly I just space off."

Mark looks around. It was a beautiful place, really, with arrays of all sorts of plants, domestic and exotic, neatly combined to form one beautiful ecosystem. At the far corner, he could see a garden shed, where all of the gardening supplies must be. But there were no chairs. As of now, they were just sitting on the dirt, the same dirt that housed the plants. He wonders if maybe Jaemin just lies down on the dirt then, kind of like what they were doing right now. 

It kind of feels like he’s a plant himself. Just doing nothing but breathing in and out, oxygen to carbon dioxide, fluttering his leaves a bit. He tells this to Jaemin. 

“That's exactly how I feel about it!” Jaemin beams at him, then softens his expression into one of concern as he gently nudges him. “Is there anything _you_ want to tell me?”

Mark takes a deep breath. 

This is what he knows:

His name is Mark Lee. At the age of 12, he decided to apply for the highly esteemed SM Academy of Performing Arts, a school known for producing the most talented artists of the generation, who then go on to have globally acclaimed careers. They receive over 300,000 applications per year, and only 300 get accepted, giving it an acceptance rate of 1%. He sent in his application, remembers anxiously checking his mail every single day until finally, one day, it came. The acceptance letter. He could hardly believe it.

SM Academy was a boarding school, so he’d packed his bags and, after a tearful exchange with his parents, went away. 

Now, there was one thing the rest of the population didn’t know about SM Academy. Sure, the school housed only the best and the brightest students, all brimming with limitless potential in all areas of excellence be it academic, creative, or athletic, but they also only gave exclusive entry to mutants, a sub-species of humans who carried the X-gene, a mutant gene which allows them to develop superhuman powers. 

Mark, who had never demonstrated nor seen any such superhuman ability (except maybe his amazingly useless ability to ramble for days on end, and it only ever happens whenever he was feeling nervous), was, well, shocked. And kind of scared, because he was surrounded by girls who can breathe fire and guys who sprouted horns on their heads and someone who carried a pitchfork around for some reason (it sounds like a living hell), but mostly shocked. 

Even with the unique acceptance requirements however, the school still basically functioned like a school. As soon as the term started, Mark didn’t _ have _the time to be shocked. Or to process any other emotion other than stress and brainless joy at yet another cancelled class. Studying in SM Academy came with all of the academic workload typical of an institution wanting to suck all of the life and enjoyment out of their students, as well as the added training curriculum for the mutants-in-training. 

All students were sorted into houses as soon as they manifest their powers. There were ten houses, all according to the type of power. The tenth house, where Mark belonged, had the “unsorted”, the ones who had yet to show their powers. Once you start manifesting your powers, the school board has you accordingly sorted into your respective house. By and by, the students in the tenth house eventually find themselves in other houses, leaving him all alone. 

Mark remembers feeling overwhelmingly lonely around this period of time. It was a period in his life he didn't want to remember, he realizes. All of the newly-gained memories held emotions that coloured the memories, making it appear distorted and lacking in color and vividness. Lunches spent in empty classrooms, countless study sessions in some obscure part of the library, fleeing from the other students who had already formed cliques of their own...and then...Donghyuck. Sometime during his first term, he had met Donghyuck. But other than that, he remembers nothing else. Not even the way they'd met. He just remembers Donghyuck's face, bright and warm against the dark backdrops of a monochrome world.

“Why did my memories get so messed up?” he asks quietly, not quite looking at Jaemin in the eye.

When he raises his head, Jaemin’s face looked troubled. “Ah, sorry, hyung. I’m afraid we can only get to that point at around our fourth meeting.” 

“Up until this point, I’d always believed that I spent my early teenage years training to be an idol in some company,” Mark confesses. “And that at some point in time, I quit and went to university. I don’t remember much else. I think I made a few friends? But when I try really hard to picture their faces, I just come out blank,” he looks at Jaemin, “I remember feeling really lonely.”

Jaemin wilts, his face drooping sadly. “I’m sorry, hyung, I really am. I swear, everything will make more sense once we really get to the bottom of it, okay? I just really don’t want to risk hurting you by exposing you to so much memory overload.”

Mark stares at the forgotten cup of coffee by the ground, feeling unnecessarily choked up. 

“And hyung?” Jaemin gently taps on his knee. He’s smiling widely now, reassuringly. “You’re not alone. After all, we’re friends! You’ve got us, whether you like it or not!”

“Thanks, Jaemin,” Mark mumbles, surreptitiously trying to wipe his eyes. Jaemin’s lower lip starts wobbling, and he launches himself at Mark, engulfing him in a tight hug. 

For a while, the two of them stay like that. Just two bros bro-hugging it out in a greenhouse, nothing much to see here. Just Jaemin being his emotional support mutant boy. 

Eventually, they separate. Mark tries to ignore the Mark tears that now stained the front of Jaemin's undoubtedly very expensive suit. 

“Ready?” Jaemin asks kindly, gesturing to his head and making a whirling motion with his fingers. “Let’s get those memories unlocked so you can remember just how much we love you! ‘Kay, so here’s how it’s going to work. Remember how I said that we were going to recover your memories one by one so as not to shock your brain? We’ll be doing just that! We’re going to be meeting regularly like this, to unlock your memories and then afterwards, if you have any questions, I’ll try my best to answer, okay?”

Marks nods eagerly, silently wishing for the days to pass by faster so they can restore his memories once again. He does want to remember his friends after all. 

*

Donghyuck apparently spends his time playing chess with himself. 

At least, that’s what Jisung told Mark when they collided with each other in the hallways; Mark wandering the halls, dazed, two hours after his meeting with Jaemin was over, and Jisung, going into the kitchen to eat the entire remnants of their shared fridge. Having superhuman strength came with the repurcussions of having to eat ten times that of a normal human being, Jisung tells him while juggling three heavy barbells, which kind of should freak Mark out, but what the hell, after spending some time in here, he's just learned to accept things as they come by now.

Mark remembers little tidbits now, like how Jaemin takes his coffee like a devil raised in the fiery depths of hell, how Jeno likes to hole himself up in his room and play videos games and only emerging if he gets hungry, how Chenle likes to chill by the rooftop sometimes, and how Jisung dislikes exercising, despite having superhuman strength. 

As for Donghyuck… well, Mark only ever gets brief glimpses at what they were like years ago, which is odd considering that according to the rest, the two of them were apparently the closest. 

He asked Jaemin this, to which he cryptically responds with, "ah, well, sometimes the most precious memories are the hardest to let go. And when they're forcibly removed, it takes a while to get them back."

Which, of course, led to Mark asking about Donghyuck bursting into his apartment.

"Hmmm, y'know what, I'm not really sure how Hyuck knew," Jaemin absently stroked his chin. "We were just minding our own business, and then suddenly, he just barrels into the dorms, screaming something about the end of the world, and the ultimate plan, and Mark Lee. I don't really know, I was in the shower then. Next thing we knew, he was gone for a couple of hours, then came back with a naked boy who looked a _lot _like him, and you."

Mark, even more confused than ever before, just nodded. He asked him a couple more questions: the nature of the "apocalypse", his powers, and Haechan.

“That’s easy,” Jaemin replied. “It’s part of your powers. I won’t say anything else, though, because you’re going to find out about it in the end anyway! So don’t even try to trick me into talking about it anymore,” he cutely wags a finger at Mark’s face, smile turning mischievous. “As for Haechan though… well, you probably already know this, but he’s exactly what Donghyuck looked like two years ago. That’s the Donghyuck you remember, and so when you ‘created’”—he air quoted—“him, he came out like that.”

Mark kind of understood, but then again, he really doesn’t. What does he mean Mark 'created' Haechan? “He used to sparkle two years ago?” he asked curiously. 

Jaemin is grinning madly now, all of his pearly white teeth flashing at him. “No, that’s what he looks like to _ you_. For you, Donghyuck is this exquisitely beautiful creature who sparkles and has stars in his eyes and is kind of an angel. Well, considering he tried to bed you, maybe he’s more classified as a demon, a very pretty demon?”

Back in the present, Mark watches Jisung saunter to the kitchen, somehow managing to balance all three barbells on his head and arms. It was like a very cute, very freaky circus act. Jisung didn't look like the type to carry weights—he looked like any regular cute and scrawny teenager who snacks on junk foods and plays video games. Seeing him like this, with three heavy-looking barbells that looked like it could crush Mark's entire body, was a little disconcerting. 

Figuring he doesn't have anywhere else to be, Mark makes his way towards the garden, where Donghyuck liked to play chess.

*

Apparently, mutant chess was a lot different than regular chess. 

Regular chess was an intense stand-off between two players testing their tactical wits against one another with only the boundaries of chess and the chess pieces in their arsenal. Mark distinctly remembers playing chess against one of the best players in the class back in elementary school, where Mark lost spectacularly in five swift moves. Despite being classified as a board game where all the players spent the entire time sitting down, he remembers sweating just as much as when he was in a basketball game, maybe even more.

_ Mutant _ chess, on the other hand, was a whole different level of intense. For one thing, all of the pawns were life-sized, human-like versions of themselves. They stood still when they weren’t being ordered to move, breathing with their arms swaying slightly, sometimes stretching, before launching into an attack as soon as the command is given. They stood in an orderly file remniscient of the military style. Standing in front of them was a commander general who had a sign of the cross etched on his chest like a badge. The bishop, Mark guesses, wilting from the general's fierce gaze fixed on him.

Also, the garden was _huge._ It was so huge, it could pass as an airport. It kind of messed with Mark's mind, just how rich this place seemed to be. _Everything_ was so big and vast here, and for _what_? Even _walking _to the bathroom might take up to an hour. Do rich people have that kind of lifestyle, he wonders. Maybe their bladders worked differently from normal citizens. 

“It’s like a multiplayer game,” Donghyuck explains, materializing next to him out of nowhere. Mark lets out a very manly screech as he recoils in surprise. Donghyuck grins at him, a little breathless, looking like he just ran a marathon. Beads of sweat matted his bangs to his forehead, which he impatiently pushes back. 

“Multiplayer game?”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck hums, “so basically it’s a virtual reality game where each player can assign themselves as either black or white, and the game automatically links you to another player in the domain.”

“Like League of Legends?” Mark tries.

Donghyuck stares at him. “Wow, that game is pretty old. Hmm, I’d say it’s much closer to Fire Emblem than League of Legends, though. This is chess, after all. Anyway, the players choose whether they’re on the black team or on the white team, and the game takes you to a war battleground where you control your own army! The difference is, instead of having sixteen pieces like in regular chess, you get to have a squadron of pawns, bishops, knights, rooks. There’s still only one king and one queen though.”

“Cool,” Mark breathes, then tilts his head confusedly. “Wait, you said this was a virtual reality game?”

Donghyuck nods.

“How come those people,” Mark gestures to the very alive, very scary-looking soldiers (the bishop general was _still_ glaring at him), “...seem very, uh, real?”

Donghyuck laughs, and Mark tries to ignore the pleased thrill that goes through his body as soon he hears it. 

“Ah, hyung,” Donghyuck says fondly, patting him vaguely on the arm. Mark's arm tingles from where his hand touched the skin, sending electric pulses into his entire body. “The thing is, you’re already in the game. The entrance to the garden was the loading pod for the game.”

It takes a couple of seconds for it to sink into his brain. “_Woooaaah,_” Mark flails his arms wildly as soon as it hits him. “That’s so _ cool._ Who came up with this?”

“One of the students in SM designed a prototype for the game as his graduation thesis,” Donghyuck answers, “The school must have thought it was amazing, because they added it to the recreation clubs ten years before it’s scheduled to be released to the public. We’re the beta-testers, I guess,” his tone was oddly tinged with bitterness.

Before Mark could reply, a smaller red-headed Donghyuck crashes into him, taking them both by surprise. They both crash on the ground, with Haechan on top of him, in a _very_ familiar position.

“Ugh,” he groans, “what happened?”

“Hey, hyu~ng,” a sweet voice drawls in his ear. Mark opens his eyes to see Haechan smiling down at him. _Sparkle, sparkle_.

“Oh my god,” he hears Donghyuck mumble from somewhere above him. “Holy shit, this is so embarrassing. Why does he say _ hyung _ like that. Why is he like that. _ Why._”

“I was wondering what was keeping so long,” Haechan continues, fingers slowly trailing up and down Mark's arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “We were playing a game, _ which I was clearly winning,_ and then the game stopped so suddenly. Then, I looked over here and found you.”

“Right, you did,” Mark agrees weakly, trying to look literally everywhere else _but_ at the cute boy on top of him.

“_I _was winning the game, you little brat. And get off him, he looks like he’s dying.”

Haechan petulantly gets off him, offering Mark a hand. He takes it. Haechan doesn’t let go of his hand after, just kind of gently laces their fingers together. Mark tries not to wheeze. Both of them, so similar yet so different, but possessing the same face and the same body. Way too much. This is way too much for him. 

“Why are you holding his hand,” Donghyuck asks, balefully eyeing their intertwined hands. 

Haechan sparkles in reply.

Looking at him now, Mark notices that he seemed to be wearing a crop top, as well as heeled boots that accentuated his long legs. His eyes shimmered with glitter, highlighting the shine in his eyes. Mark tries not to blush when he remembers how his body looked like underneath the clothes. He fails. 

Donghyuck apparently noticed him checking Haechan out, because he lets out a loud groan and raises his head to the skies. “I would like to go now, please,” he announces to the heavens.

Haechan giggles (_giggles_, lord, how cute is he) and, when no divine intervention happens to make Donghyuck ascend so unexpectedly, tugs on Mark’s hand. “Come on, Mark. Come to my team and help me defeat him.”

“Mark is playing on your team?” Donghyuck snorts derisively, “well, you were already losing before, but with _him_ on your team, you’re not just going to lose, you’re gonna lose _miserably_." He looks giddy at the thought.

He skips away from them, presumably heading towards his own territory. 

“Um, Haechan,” Mark calls hesitantly, “do you know why he’s so mad? He was so friendly, but then he just kind of? Switched gears? I mean, he _ is _ you, so you might have some ideas... “

Haechan lets out a little grin. “It’s because he’s jealous, of course,” he twinkles.

“Jealous? Of what?”

“Rather than being jealous of me,” Haechan hums thoughtfully, “I think it’s more along the lines of how he’ll never live up to your expectations.”

_ What._

The time he’s spent in this mansion, castle, whatever, feels like it’s draining all of his remaining precious brain power. Mark can barely even understand simple sentences anymore, much less process them in his fried mass of a brain. In the end, he just nods without really getting it. Like he's been doing practically the whole time ever since he first stepped into this place.

Haechan drags him over to the control panel, where they were supposed to issue orders to their troops using a virtual keyboard that contained all of the information about their own army, their locations, as well as the general outline of the battlefield. 

All of this Haechan explains absentmindedly as he pushes button after button, toggling one key and then another. He wracks up explosions, weaponry in his arsenal, eventually getting so into it that he completely forgets about Mark's awkward existence in the corner. He spews out vicious insults, almost tackling the controller at some point. 

None of the people here were really any good at explaining things, Mark observes, maybe a little sourly as he crowds himself into the corner to avoid the other boy's wrath. 

In the end, they (read: Haechan) lose. Very badly. It only took Donghyuck seven minutes to massacre their (Haechan's) entire army and surround their(...Haechan's) base with a towering army so massive, even _Achilles_ would have cowered in fear.

“Well, that was a good game,” Donghyuck says cheerily, after they all climbed out of their control pods. “Very refreshing! Thanks to that, I now have a plan.”

“A plan?” Mark repeats curiously.

Donghyuck nods, face stilling into a neutral expression, though a dangerous glint in his eyes say another thing entirely. “What we’re gonna do about the apocalypse. And by the apocalypse, I mean you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [17.08.19] do you ever feel like your writings never come out exactly as planned? an outline is there, you've got everything right there in your head but somewhere along the way while you're typing and re-typing and deleting, it transforms. this is nothing like my original outline LOL  
i hope you all enjoy your day! maybe drink a cup of coffee (or any beverage you desire) and take care of yourselves! it's getting quite hot lately


	3. donghyuck wants to suck the toes of the geniuses (if they're into that)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dreamies eat chicken while casually discussing mark's mortality rate, ten is here and he is an Absolute Genius~ + preview of what goes on in hyuck's head

“So,” Renjun peers over his oversized spectacles, adjusting his cowboy hat. Quite the fashion statement he had going on, but it looked good on him anyway. “What’s this plan you were talking about?”

The group were all gathered by the dining hall. Minutes after they had finished their impromptu and completely one-sided chess game, Donghyuck had announced a group meeting in the dining hall, pronto. He ‘announced’ this by sprinting towards the dining hall and bellowing at the top of his lungs: “_GET YOUR ASSES DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW. LAST ONE HERE HAS TO BUY CHICKEN FOR THE REST OF US."_

One by one, they stumbled in, cursing and pushing at each other as they raced to the adjourned meeting place. Chenle arrived first, grinning as he plopped himself on the nearest chair. Following his impressively quick entrance, Renjun casually strolled in, and then came Jisung, who still had bits of rice stuck in the corner of his mouth. Finally, Jaemin sauntered in, followed by a floating Jeno, who wore the most miserable expression Mark had ever seen.

“Jeno’s buying the chicken,” Jaemin said as soon as he sat down. The floating Jeno then drops to the floor as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Not fair,” Jeno whined, “he ambushed me! He levitated me!” 

He was met with a very unsympathetic group whose only concern was free chicken (though Chenle laughed and called him "Jeno hyung no jam"). Jeno pulled out his phone, features twisted in misery as he called the chicken place and soullessly recited their regular order.

The others had refused to do anything further until the chicken arrived, so they’d mostly just talked over each other, talking about nothing in particular. Somehow, Mark got the sense that this is how it usually went whenever they got together: just a mess of chaotic noises (courtesy of Chenle and his perfect pitch which he creatively uses to imitate non-human noises) and getting thrown out of whatever seat they were occupying (Jisung had thrown Donghyuck just a few minutes prior, with Jaemin calmly levitating him back down to relative safety). 

It felt nice.

Once the ordered chicken had arrived, there was just a blissful moment of silence where everyone was too preoccupied with grabbing food for themselves, Mark included. 

Then, finally, Renjun had asked the important question.

“Right,” Donghyuck takes a large gulp of the soda, “so, here’s the plan: we do nothing.”

“Nothing?” they all echo, in varying levels of disbelief. 

Donghyuck nods, gobbling down some more chicken. He loves chicken, Mark remembers randomly. “Think about it. SM probably already knows about Mark hyung, since I brought him here—"

“Wait, we’re in SM Academy right now?” Mark interrupts faintly. The school of his dreams? And he was just _casually_ inside? _Eating greasy chicken?_

All six pairs of eyeballs stare at him, oh, seven, including Haechan who was also there in the room. 

“It's Mark hyung,” Chenle explains to the others, to which they all nod their heads in understanding. Somehow Mark feels like they’re not talking about his lost memories here, but rather his impeccable priorities and deductive reasoning. He feels vaguely insulted, but also, yeah. Valid.

“_Anyway_, as I was saying,” Donghyuck persists, after an extended silence where they watched Mark take an awed look around him, “SM probably already knows he’s here, and sooner or later they’ll send someone to investigate. In, like, maybe five hours-ish. They’re gonna take care of that asteroid too, and the public news will say that it’s a ‘cosmic miracle’ that the asteroid didn’t hit us, so we don’t have to do anything about that. The problem here is Mark.”

“Right,” Renjun lowers his half-bitten chicken as he stares at the table, frowning. “I agree about the asteroid. It doesn’t concern us at all. What I’m worried about is Mark hyung and what they’ll do to him once they find out about his true power.”

Murmurs go around the table. The chicken, fairly greasy and probably the best chicken Mark had ever had in a long time, suddenly tastes like nothing. Mark slowly puts it down on his plate, suddenly feeling apprehensive. 

Donghyuck slumps. His posture was already pretty bad, but he slumps even further. “I know,” he gripes, “why did I even bring him here, I wasn’t thinking straight!”

“Think about it this way: if you just left him alone there, he would have caused more trouble,” Jeno reasons, patting him on the back. 

Mark gets a vivid imagery of a wild, feral animal accidentally left loose in the school. He fervently hopes that's not what they think of him.

“So… what’s my power exactly?” he inquires. Despite himself, a bubble of excitement rises in his chest at the thought of wielding powers.

The group all look at each other, engaging in a silent exchange that left Mark feeling a little left-out.

Finally, it’s Jaemin who sighs and leans forward, eyes searching his. “Mark, what you have is different from the rest of us. It’s something we don’t know how to control, and it can be dangerous if used improperly. That’s why we’ve been trying to keep it from you.”

“_But,_” he says once he sees Mark’s crestfallen face, “aww, look at his face. It looks like a cute baby lion being bullied. Anyway, but! It’s kind of a dangerous situation we’re playing with here. There's a lot at stake, probably even more than what we're equipped for. So, worst case scenario is SM finding you and then forcing your powers to awaken by themselves, which is—disastrous. We're going to tell you, okay? Just the general idea of what you're capable of, and what we _do _know of it.”

Mark brightens, nodding.

Jaemin makes a few aborted attempts to speak, opening and closing his mouth several times. He shakes his head and eventually turns to Jisung. “Jisungie~ you do it. You tell him.”

Jisung blinks several times, taken aback at the suddenness. “Okay,” he says slowly, gauging the seriousness of the room, “uh, well. Mark hyung, you’re kind of, like,” he waves his arms around in vague motions, “like. A god.”

“Oh, I'm a god," Mark nods vacantly, then pausing. Blinks several times. Allows his brain to process the fed information. "I'm a _w__hat_,” he blurts out, after several moments of him blue-screening inside. At the corner of his eyes, he can see Jeno laughing into his chicken. “What does that even _ mean_.”

“Oh god,” Donghyuck wheezes, clutching his stomach as the rest of the group dissolves into laughter at Jisung’s suprememly awkward and very ineloquent reveal and Mark’s face.

“Don’t you mean: ‘oh, _ Mark'_,” Renjun chortles.

As the chuckles subside, Donghyuck faces Mark again. “Mark. You have the power to manipulate the laws of the universe. Negate it, rewrite it, whatever. You had a bad week at school, and maybe sometime during that week you thought to yourself: ‘wow I wish an asteroid would strike me at this very moment so I won’t have to do this’. And boom, asteroid appeared out of nowhere. Have you ever wondered why things always seemed to happen exactly as you envision it?”

Mark opens his mouth, no doubt to object to that, because truth be told, he had a _lot_ of unfortunate and unexpected events that happened to him during his lifetime, but then thinks. _Really_ thinks it through. It’s true, he thinks, puzzled. He’d always find himself in the same exact scenarios he’d pictured in his head. He chalked it up to always being prepared—his mom did spend his entire childhood preaching about boyscout ethics and how human survival depended on instincts or preparedness—also, it helps with his anxiety, the knowledge that he always has everything ready in case something happened otherwise, but now...

“You had a dream about 18-year old Donghyuck,” Renjun shares a look of mischief with Jaemin as he does so, much to Donghyuck’s chagrin. “And maybe you thought to yourself: ‘I wish that dream was real’._ Poof_, Haechan. I’m curious though, why the name Haechan?”

“It means ‘full sun’,” Haechan offers, when he looks up to find everyone staring at him curiously. “I remind him of the sun, apparently.”

“Okay," Donghyuck says loudly, "you, shut up and eat your fries, nobody asked.” He grumpily turns his face to side. The tips of his ears were red. 

“_I _asked.”

“Good thing _ nobody cares what you asked_, Injunnie.”

Renjun exaggeratedly mimics throwing the entire bucket of chicken at him. Donghyuck responds by pretending to make threatening hand motions that suggest imminent death. 

“Okay, but seriously, we have to think about what to do with god over here,” Donghyuck sighs after their improvised acting stint that somehow ended in them regressing to toddlers as they made cutesy faces at each other. “‘Cuz I’ve thought of a few things, but they’re not looking too good, honestly.”

“Maybe Mark could just, I don’t know, use his power to pretend he’s not here? I mean he _ can _ technically do literally anything,” Renjun points out.

“Good point, but it can only work if Mark can fully control his power.”

They all turn to Mark, who shrinks under their gazes, feeling like a child.

“No,” Renjun says decisively, “besides, with his power, it’ll be dangerous to try anything. And we’re trying to sneak him away from SM, right?”

“But why?” Mark can't help but ask. The question had been pressing at his mind for quite some time, even though he'd already asked Jaemin. There's something he still doesn't really understand about the whole hiding agenda. “Why are you trying to hide me from them? Isn’t this supposed to be… like a school for mutants? A safe place for...us?” he tacks on the 'us', feeling strangely wrong somehow. 

“It is,” Jaemin concurs. He looks like he wants to say something more, but he doesn't. Just purses his lips, frowning.

Nobody bothers to explain any further, which only propels Mark’s confusion to new heights. He suspects it’s something to do with the whole memory loss thing they’re keeping quiet about. 

For a while, they bounce ideas off of each other:

“Maybe Jisung could throw Mark hyung as hard as he can? Get him away far, far away from here.”

“Chenle, Mark hyung will literally _ die _ if we do that.”

“Psh, Jaemin hyung can just levitate him! Oooh, what about levitating him so high up until he reaches the earth’s atmosphere? They’ll never see him there!”

“Chenle, _ he’ll still die_. Of lack of air pressure.”

“Ugh, Mark hyung, why are you always dying... “

“Uh, sorry for being subject to mortal death…?”

“What about hiding him in Jeno’s room? SM’s pretty used to Jeno smuggling cats in, maybe they’ll think he’s one of his cats!”

“Hehe, _ Mark hyung kitty!_”

"Donghyuck can shape-shift into Mark, and then we'll confuse them and they'll never know which one's the real one! Like a magic trick!"

"Okay, there are so many things wrong with that, but first of all: _no_."

Soon, they run out of ideas, and the group discussion dwindles into mumurs and randomly blurted out ideas that were each as ridiculous as the previous one (with Chenle consistenly throwing out ideas that cause Mark's numerous hypothetical deaths). At the corner of his eyes, Mark sees Donghyuck shoot a meaningful glance at Jaemin, who greasily winks back. 

A moment later, he feels a yawn coming. He stifles it, but only barely.

“Are you tired, hyung?” Jeno asks, letting out a low whistle, “I can’t blame you. Wanna take a nap for a bit?”

Mark tries to wave it off, but then gets interrupted by a second yawn. His eyelids were drooping. It was a chore to keep them open at this point. 

“Haechan, do you mind taking him to a quiet area so he can rest?” he hears someone ask, but doesn’t hear the rest of it, as his consciousness soon gives out.

He's never felt so sleepy before. 

* * *

They watch as Haechan lifts Mark up as easily as if he were a small puppy, cooing over him as they head to a different part of the dorms. He settles into his arms, even nuzzling his nose into the crook of Haechan's neck. Donghyuck would say he’s more like a kitten than anything else. A cute overgrown, bumbling kitten who gets overly excited about the smallest things, mewing at anything that amazed him. And who tends to get sulky when not paid enough attention, but contradicts itself by launching itself into oblivion when showered with the affection it was craving forand—okay, Donghyuck might have had the image of Mark in kitty form stubbornly stuck in his brain ever since Renjun first suggested it. It was an unbearably cute image. 

“Okay, what have you _ really _ got?” Renjun rounds on him as soon as the two were well out of earshot. “We’ve got like two more hours left before they—and I mean the faculty—send someone down here to investigate.”

Donghyuck gnaws his lip. “I've thought about taking him away from here, to a place where he can be safe,” he admits, purposely leaving out significant details. _ They don’t need to know about anything else_. _ Have to keep them safe. _

“And are you sure this place can be trusted?” Renjun asks carefully. 

A rush of indignance flows through Donghyuck as he answers sharply: “I won’t let anything happen to him, you know that.”

“Alright,” Jeno cuts in abruptly, “Hyuck, we just have to be really careful, alright? We’re not just breaking, like, hundreds of SM’s rules. We’re also putting Mark hyung at risk here.”

Donghyuck, properly chastised, lowers his head and gives a tiny nod. “I know. I’m sorry. I just feel like it’s my fault. I wasn’t thinking when I brought him here. There were _ literally _ thousands of places I could have brought him, and I chose to bring him _ here_, of all places. _Here_. SM.”

_ Literally the worst place in the world, right next to shops that sell sour candies_, he thinks bitterly. 

“He doesn’t know how to control his power yet. Worse, until a few minutes ago, he didn’t even know what he was capable of,” Jisung, surprisingly, speaks up. “I think it was the best option to bring him here, where we can ease him back into this world again.”

Despite the severity of the situation hanging over their heads like the gloomy skies of a summer day, Donghyuck can’t help but smile proudly. As a kid, Jisung never really knew how to talk to others his age, always preferring to lurk around in corridors alone while keeping his head low. Slowly but surely, he eventually opened up. Though, maybe they’d spoilt him too much… more often than not, the group always found themselves going along with whatever ridiculous concept Jisung and/or Chenle cooked up lately. Ah, well. Maybe they’re just going through puberty. Donghyuck would happily play along with the kids' outrageous demands. 

Renjun lets out a small noise of agreement. “Nice going by the way, putting him to sleep like that,” he says to Jaemin, “he can’t do anything while he’s asleep.”

“Okay, so the plan is: get Mark hyung to safety as quickly as possible… and then what? SM will still know about a mutant being here with us.”

“Haechan,” Donghyuck blurts. They all turn to him, confused. His hands were shaking, he belatedly notices. He picks at the frayed seams of his jeans to give them something to do. “We can use Haechan as bait. While we move Mark, Haechan can stay here with us and pose as the questionable mutant presence,” he clarifies.

_ Haechan_. Bile rises up in his throat as he recalls the last time he’d been called _ Haechan_, or rather, full sun. Images came unbidden in his mind: flashes of skin, warm chuckles, hushed confessions pressed into his neck… he squashes the thoughts before they spiral any further. Or worse, before Jaemin notices. Donghyuck peers at Jaemin, who looked blissfully unaware. 

“Is he even a mutant?” Chenle looks doubtful. “Mark hyung made him while his memories were… ” he trails off, wringing his hands as he looks for the right word, “...yeah,” he finishes lamely. "How are we sure he has the same life force as a mutant's?"

“I talked to him for a bit while we were playing chess. He’s definitely a mutant, though his powers are different from mine. His is, like, solar absorption. He’s powered by the energy of the sun, sort of.”

_ Also, he was kind of amazing. Though admittedly embarassing in his displays of affection, he still seemed to be filled to the brim with love, even bursting out of him in sporadic moments as he latches on to anyone in the vicinity. Nothing like Donghyuck. Of course Mark would make someone who looks exactly like him but is _ nothing _ like him at all. Of course Donghyuck himself would never be enough. _

“It’s kind of scary if you think about it,” Renjun murmurs, “Mark hyung has the power to unknowingly create a mutant with his own will, even equipping him with a different set of abilities. Imagine how much power SM will harvest from him if they get their hands on him…”

“And that’s exactly why we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure they’ll never get their hands on him,” Donghyuck states firmly. “Erasing his memory didn’t work, it only delayed the inevitable. Now we move on to Plan B: run.”

“Hyuck,” Jeno hesitantly puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you think it’s kind of… bad? To throw Haechan under the bus like that? I mean, he _ is _you…”

_ He’s not_, he wants to scream at their faces. For fuck’s sake, the dude _ sparkled _ like a goddamn pixie taken straight out of a fairy tale. The only thing they had in common was the vague outline of what he may have looked like two years ago, though even _that _Donghyuck can’t say for sure, because he tends to change his appearance whenever he feels the need to. He never looks the same, that's the entire point of his power. 

_ He’ll never be enough. He’ll always be behind the scenes, the one whose existence solely depends on him becoming another person, another mask._

“If he is really me, then he’ll understand,” he says shortly. “C’mon, we’ve gotta move. The faster we do this, the safer we will be—"

Chenle stands up abruptly. The chair clatters to the floor as he perks his ears, listening. “Guys,” he whispers, terrified. “They’re coming. Thirty minutes.”

Donghyuck curses under his breath, scrambling to his feet. “_Fuck_. They’re faster than I expected. Okay. Alright.”

“What do we do?” Jeno looks at him, eyes wide.

Donghyuck whirls around to face Jaemin. He absolutely hated doing this to him. Jaemin already has so much on his plate, and it’s all because of Donghyuck and his stupid, stupid mistakes. Christ, Jaemin never even sleeps anymore because he’s scared he might not be able to maintain the mental shields he placed around their memories while being asleep. Instead, he drinks a shitton of coffee and alters his own consciousness so he never has to sleep. “Nana,” he says worriedly, already hating himself for the suggestion, “I’m sorry, but…”

“You want me to take ahold of their minds so they won’t see anything amiss, right?” Jaemin finishes easily, smiling. “Sure, I can do that.”

“They might have a telepath in their group too,” Renjun warns. “That’ll make things trickier.”

“Chenle, can you hear if _ Two _is there with them?”

Chenle furrows his brows, listening intently. He shakes his head. “No. It’s _ One _ and _ Ten_.”

“Ten hyung,” Donghyuck breathes a sigh of relief, “okay, we can deal with them.” _ Ten’s one of us_. Though for some reason, he can’t shake off the feeling that there is something terribly, terribly wrong.

“Guys,” Chenle’s voice is laced with clear panic. “I can’t hear Mark hyung and Haechan hyung anymore.”

What?

“_What?_”

“Just now,” Chenle says distractedly, “I could hear them just fine seconds ago, but then it’s like they just magically disappeared...it’s almost like..."

“Like they teleported,” Renjun concludes, voice tight. “Of course. _ One _must have his power nullification gadget thingy with him, which explains why you suddenly can't hear them.”

Donghyuck swears. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I can always talk to Ten hyung." _Ten is one of us_, he thinks again, desperately. _ They could have sent any one of the other nine house leaders. Ten hyung probably volunteered. _ _ He's coming to see what's going on before any of the higher-ups get involved. He can explain things to Ten, and he'll help them—_

“Of course you can always talk to me!” a cheerful voice rings through the room. _ Ten hyung. That's weird, normally he likes to sneak up on them to catch them off-guard; Ten had a very weird sense of humor and he delighted in making others feel off-center...unless he did it on purpose. Alerting them that he was in the room. A warning that they should stop whatever it was they were talking about._

Donghyuck clamps his mouth shut and shoots the others a warning look. They all nod in unspoken agreement. 

One and Ten materialize into the room.

SM Academy has ten houses, where students are sorted according to the type of power they wield. Accordingly, there are also house leaders, whose job is to maintain training and discipline in the houses. Ten house leaders for ten houses.

One — a scowling man who leads House 1: Transport— who possesses the ability of teleportation.

Ten — a smiley young man who leads House 10: The Unsorted — who possesses the ability to manipulate liquid forms.

Ten gives them a jaunty wave as soon as they catch sight of him.

“Not to worry, kids, we’ve got this all figured out,” Ten speaks quickly, before any of them could open their mouths. _Don't say anything before I finish talking_, he warns silently. “We found two perpetrators in your dorm. Luckily they didn’t manage to do anything to any of you. As a matter of fact, one of them was actually sleeping, can you believe that? Who actually falls asleep while trying to infiltrate one of the most heavily guarded facilities of all time?”

What? Surely, surely, they must have some inkling of what’s going on...and then Donghyuck glances at One again. _ Oh. Ten hyung, you absolute genius. _ Of course he would figure things out quickly. Ten had immediately volunteered to check the state of their dorms, bringing with him the biggest idiot in the faculty, One.

Ten had then used his incredible wit (some would prefer to describe it as his magnificent ability to bullshit) to spin tales in order to confuse his gullible colleague. Donghyuck's not entirely sure what his game was, but one thing was for sure: Ten had bought them some much needed time to regroup and replan.

“Rest assured, we’ve bound them and will deal with them accordingly,” One informs them. He raises a solemn brow at Jaemin and Chenle. “Though I do wonder… you, you’re a telepath. You, you have advanced auditory senses that allow you to hear sound waves not accessible to the human ear. Neither of you noticed anything the whole time they were here?” his tone was tinged with suspicion. Donghyuck holds his breath —

Ten sighs exaggeratedly. “It’s because of this, you big idiot,” he points at the machine latched on One’s arm. The nullification machine. “You’ve been lugging it around the whole day. In case you forgot, it has a range of five thousand meters. Obviously it disrupted the kids’ powers and nullified it, which is how the infiltrators managed to get inside in the first place, I'm betting.”

At this point, Donghyuck is absolutely ready to kiss Ten’s feet. If he wanted his toes to be sucked, then so be it. Personally, Donghyuck isn’t too fond of toe-sucking, but for Ten, he would, if he asked. 

“W—what?” One twists his body, trying to look for the offending machine. “I thought I left it in the office,” he scratches his head in confusion.

“Clearly, you didn’t, because it’s right there,” Ten drawls in a tone that implies he had lost all faith in his colleague’s brain, “you're going to be in so much trouble with the board director," Ten turns to them, smiling. "In any case, we’re terribly sorry to have interrupted your… team bonding experience,” he eyes the left-over chicken by the table hungrily, “but we simply wanted to inform you of the recent events.”

Donghyuck speaks up. “What happened to the infiltrators?”

Ten’s eyes flash; a warning look. _ Don’t bring attention to yourself. _ He laughs airily. “Aww, Hyuckie~ were you scared? It’s not like you to just ask about anyone like that. Not to worry, it's all under control. _Six _ has them. She's looking over their identities as we speak.”

_ Six. _Leader of House 6: Mental Ability. Has the ability to sense the presence and mutant level of other mutants.

...which means they’re effectively cornered. It’s only a matter of time before they find out about Mark’s power. Donghyuck feels hysterical laughter bubble in his throat. _God_, he's so stressed. His heart's thudding against his ribcage so hard, he feels like he can't even hear anything around him anymore. 

“I have to say though,” One rubs his chin, seemingly in thought. “One of them looks a _ lot _ like you. And the other one looks like a former student... “

Ten shrugs carelessly. “Donghyuck-ssi here does have the outstanding ability to look like anyone,” he says easily. “And you have the memory of a slug. One, you barely even remember your own name most days. And it's a _number_. How can you even remember a student, much less a _former_ student?Anyway, let’s get going, shall we? Let’s stop disturbing the kids. Unless you wanted to stay longer so you can learn what it’s like to be in touch with the youth for once?”

One sputters, his face turning a blotchy shade of red. “You—!”

“Me,” Ten says mildly, “well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go already. I’m hungry. Sorry Donghyuck-ah,” he throws over his shoulder. _ Sorry, this is the best I can do_, he translates. 

With that, he grabs One’s arm and together they disappear, fast as they arrived.

“What just happened…” Jisung wonders. 

Donghyuck lets out a long, shaky breath. His legs feel like jelly. “I’ll tell you what happened. Ten hyung just saved our sorry asses.”

He pauses, feeling the familiar feeling of guilt stir in his gut, as it always does whenever he thinks about Mark. Stupid, beautiful Mark Lee who never stays away no matter how many times he pushes him away. God, he’s still so stupidly in love with this absolute moron after all this time, amnesiac or not, arguably most powerful mutant in the whole world or not.

“I can’t say the same for Mark though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **(7) Mark: Reality warping**  
The ability to manipulate the laws of reality. Not much else is known about his power, except he apparently has the latent ability to create a whole new being and an asteroid massive enough to destroy the planet earth.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: [Not available.]_
> 
> **(8) Ten: Liquid manipulation**  
The ability to control water and by extension, all liquids.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: He's also a very good dancer. Renjun once likened his dancing skills to be like the flowing states of water, ever running and always connected with the fluidity of each movement._


	4. jeno's cat says "meow!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tw: minor character death**

Mark wakes up to the funky smell of chemical concoctions attacking his nostrils. 

Also, he’s strapped down to an operation table. Solid, metal bars hold his limbs down, with very little room for movement except for the tiniest of twitches. Bright light attacks his eyes as soon as he opens them. It’s all very disorienting and Mark feels very much like the frogs they used to dissect in school (“for_ science! _” his science high school teacher bellowed, waving a limp frog at Mark’s spooked face). 

Mark feels like the limp frog being violently waved. Except instead of being shoved in unsuspecting students' faces, he's already strapped down, ready for the wily students to open him up and laugh at his insides. Being a frog was hard.

“Oh, you’re awake,” a soft voice alerts him that there’s someone else in the room. He tries to crane his neck to look, but the bars hold him back. There were needles stuck into his arms, attached to long coils of catheters that lead to a—drip, of some sort. There was a monitor beside him, which occasionally let out little beeps. A steady stream of information flashed across the screen. 

“Sorry about all of this,” the voice speaks again, this time apologetically. A woman appears in his peripheral vision, face extraordinarily beautiful yet utterly expressionless. “It’s custom to treat infiltrators like they’re, well, infiltrators.”

Infiltrators? 

He must have voiced this out loud, because the woman begins to explain: “you are in SM Academy for the Performing Arts. An academic institution that is heavily guarded at all times to ensure utmost protection for the staff and the students inside. An infiltration is, as you may very well guess, a sufficient cause for inspection. Especially if said infiltration was done by a former student.”

The woman fixes her icy gaze on him. “Mark Lee. It’s nice to see you back.”

“Like...wise?” Mark tries his best to bow, as best as one could while strapped down in a metal table. 

“I understand that your memories have been tampered with,” the woman says, peering at the monitor next to him and nodding, apparently satisfied. “So you can’t answer all of the questions that we need answers to. Instead, why don’t you tell us about Lee Donghyuck?”

_ Lee Donghyuck, _ a small voice pipes inside his mind, _ is a beautiful being capable of many things: shapeshifting to any living or nonliving beings, fighting using many different fighting styles, making his friends laugh by virtue of being witty as well as beautiful, and extremely proficient at breaking Mark Lee’s heart! _

“Well, he’s—" Mark starts to say, before he’s interrupted.

“Any luck?” Ten comes into the room, leaning against the doorframe.

“No,” the woman sighs, “he remembers nothing about who did this to him. Apparently he was buying coffee when he stumbled across Lee Donghyuck, who, upon recognizing him, dragged him back to the school. This can explain why he suddenly appeared on the school grounds, but it doesn’t quite answer _ how _ Donghyuck managed to escape the school grounds.”

That...does not sound like what happened. Mark blinks, opening his mouth—but a flash of _ something _ stops him. A memory—Jaemin telling him about—things, though he doesn’t quite remember. Jaemin was saying something—they were in the garden, no, wait, a...greenhouse. He was saying something, but the words come out garbled and distorted when he tries focusing his attention on it.

The woman instantly turns to him, gaze cold and calculating. “Someone has tampered with his memory,” she says, “and it’s someone strong enough to place mental barriers in his head. Even now, it's messing with his head and making him all disoriented and constantly teetering between the unreal and the real. I can’t get through it,” she admits quietly, “and it’s possible that it’s someone inside the school doing this.”

Ten gasps, holding a hand to his chest in mock surprise. “Irene! Are you saying there are spies in here? In SM?”

“Don’t say my name,” Irene admonishes him, “and yes. I am. I’m only telling you this because I think you’re one of those spies too. And you’re doing a poor job at concealing it.”

There’s a brief silence, and the tension in the room rises so quickly, Mark feels his heart rate spike up, oh man, he feels like he could have a heart attack out of nowhere.

Then—Ten laughs.

“Well, well, well,” he places his hands on his hip, shaking his head, “what shall I do next? You caught me. Are you going to report me to the director?”

“Oh, don’t worry, he already knows,” Irene says, her lips curling to form a small smile. “And he already has a plan for it.”

“Are you going to tell me about this plan of his?” Ten asks, cocking his head.

Irene lets out a small laugh, rising to her feet and striding over to where he was. She pats him on the arm, very briefly. “Now, why would I disclose classified information to a known spy? Whatever would happen if you were to know that he’s planning on debuting an idol group that consists of Lee Mark, Lee Donghyuck, Huang Renjun, Lee Jeno, Na Jaemin, Zhou Chenle, and Park Jisung? What would I gain from telling you that? Something good, I hope.”

And with a swish of her robes, Irene—also known by her faculty name as Two—exits the door. 

Ten stands there for a few seconds, still as a statue. Then, he lets out a huge sigh and swears. “Now I owe her. You don’t really want to owe Irene anything...that woman is beyond dangerous.”

He walks over to where Mark is, and starts undoing all of the bolts and bars that hold him in place. “It’s going to be fine, Mark. Do you remember me?”

“Yeah,” Mark winces, rubbing his wrists from where the bars had dug in painfully. “Ten hyung. Jaemin recovered some of my memories…um. You used to be my house leader, right? What’s going on? Where's the rest of them?”

“Oh boy, you have no idea,” Ten snorts, though his tone indicates that nothing about the situation is remotely funny to him. He stands back, observing how Mark slowly sits up. “Well, we’re basically fucked. And it’s only a matter of time before they do something to me. The good thing is that you’re all going to be debuted in an idol group.”

“Wait, what,” Mark starts to squawk. “But—but—I don’t know anything about being an idol!”

“Yes, you do,” Ten responds dully, “You were in this school for six years, of course you have all of the idol qualities. And be quiet, I’m thinking.”

“Okay,” Mark says in a small voice.

“So...they know I’m involved, they know _ Donghyuck _’s involved...and they’re—debuting him, hmm. Could it be that they’re trying to prevent us from escaping by putting him in the public eye?”

Mark straightens at this, troubled. “Oh, shit.”

“Be quiet, you. Yes, Ten, I think so too,” Ten says decisively, “they’re taunting us, that’s what it is. And they’re sending a clear message: ‘we know what you’re doing’. Well, what the fuck, how’s that for petty. Lee Sooman, you absolute bastard.”

“Oh _ shit_.”

Ten runs a hand over his face tiredly. “I don’t have the brain capacity for this,” he decides. “We need to regroup immediately.”

“Right,” Mark nods, because what else can he possibly do in this situation except blindly take a leap of faith. Like that frog. 

*

“Well,” Chenle says brightly. “At least we’re going to debut! That’s only been our dream since—what, since _ forever_.”

Donghyuck lets out a garbled noise from where he’s been slumped on the table, head flat on the surface. Mark wants to come over to him and karate chop his back to let it straighten—sheesh, he truly has _ terrible _ posture, but he holds himself back. Barely. Only the thought of touching Donghyuck is enough to terrorize every cell in his body to absolute stillness.

“Oh, Chenle, you angel,” Ten reaches over to squeeze Chenle’s cheeks. “Your optimism never fails to put me in a good mood. It reminds me that no matter what, everything is going to be alright.”

“We are truly and well _ fucked_,” Donghyuck bemoans, grabbing a frozen yoghurt and shovels spoonfuls of it inside his mouth unhappily. “Might as well just eat all of the frozen yoghurt in the world and die so we can all die _happy _ deaths, at least.”

“Oh, Donghyuck, you demon, you,” Ten reaches over to cuff Donghyuck on the neck, like a mother cat would do to a misbehaving kitten, “your pessimism never fails to put me in a bad mood. It reminds me that we live in a society and nothing will ever be fine in this horrible and dark world.”

“Irene noona didn’t get through my mental shields,” Jaemin says happily, utterly lost in his own bubble ever since Ten had caught them all up to what happened. The mention of Irene failing to pass his mental shields had regressed him to a happy babbling baby capable of only saying the words repeated to him. He was in a state of happy oblivion and nobody really wanted to ruin that. 

“I don’t think there’s much else we can do,” Renjun sneaks in five spoonfuls of salt in the oblivious Jaemin’s frozen yoghurt. Sometimes when Renjun feels down, he just reverts to casually causing misery to anyone unfortunately near him, and the misery of others is enough to put him in a good mood again. “We’re, like, bound to a contract that says we have to agree to do anything SM tells us to do. In exchange for that, they give us our _ future_,” he sneers at the word. 

“We debut,” Donghyuck says glumly, “We become idols, people who are supposed to be _ perfect _ and _ untouchable_. They control our schedules, our performances, our music, our _ lives_. Everything we do will be monitored, by not just SM, but the entire country as well. It’s their way of saying they can and will do anything to us.”

Jeno lets out a sad sound that could have been just him trying to meow at his cat. One of his cats had followed him, and he was petting her fur and feeding her treats from under the table. Every now and then, he would wipe his nose with his shirt sleeve because of his allergy to cat fur. He still keeps petting though. And meowing at the indifferent cat.

“And in the meantime, they’ll get to harvest Mark’s power,” Ten says gloomily. 

Jisung snaps his head back up. “Wait, did they ever get to find out about Mark hyung’s power?” 

“Actually, I’m not really sure,” Ten admits sheepishly, “We don’t really tell each other things in the faculty. We only hear about it through reports or when we want to gossip about this particular thing or the other. I’ve been digging through trash bins and the printer’s _ history _ function just to get my hands on these reports, jesus, I’m such a _ good _ spy—Irene doesn’t know who she’s dealing with. I don't have any idea how she managed to blow up my cover.”

He was surrounded by such a gloomy air about him that all of the kids—even the temporarily brain dead Jaemin—immediately goes over to his side to reassure him that he’s a good spy, _ the best spy ever_, James Bond didn’t get to start his career until _ after _ Ten made his debut as a spy, and only because he was so inspired by Ten’s spying prowess. 

Ten looks marginally cheered up. “Irene’s just too smart for her own good,” he agrees sagely. 

“Or maybe she just saw you going through the trash and eavesdropping on the others,” Donghyuck supplies unhelpfully. At Ten’s crestfallen face, Jeno comes to the rescue and tackles Donghyuck to the ground, effectively keeping him from spouting any more truths that will destroy Ten’s will to live. Jeno’s cat mewls in outrage as the two wrestle each other five feet away from her napping spot, then hops on Renjun’s lap and curls into a ball there, purring contentedly.

“Okay, so, uh, we really have to debut then,” Renjun says, wincing as Jeno’s cat decides that his lap was a good scratching post. “Damn. This is literally my dream come true but why do I feel so...sick and twisty all over? I actually think I’m about to throw up...”

“Probably the amount of frozen yoghurt you had,” Jisung suggests, pointedly looking at the seven empty cups littering Renjun’s side. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” Donghyuck bangs his hands on the table. “So SM practically knows about all our secrets! No big deal! Nothing to worry about!” He looks very worried. “All we have to do is play along with their little game and be good little idols. That would take away most of our time, because on top of practice, we still have to perform and promote and record the songs, right. This is really weird, though. Chenle and Jisung haven't graduated yet, and they're already debuting us. They usually wait until all of the members in an idol group graduate, or at the very least least finish the program, before debuting them.”

"Remember that SM knows about you now," Ten reminds him. "Debuting you all would give you less overall time to play double agent. On the bright side, you'll spend less time in SM, because you'll be busy promoting."

“By the way,” Mark starts tentatively. All of them swivel their heads to look at him, even Jeno’s cat. Though she looks more interested in the meat jerky in his hand than his actual existence. “Should we really be discussing all of this so...freely? Aren’t we still inside SM?”

Ten waves his hand carelessly. “Don’t worry, we’re inside a virtual reality. Like that game Donghyuck likes to play so much.”

“Wait, what?! How?! I didn’t even notice we were inside a virtual reality!”

“Mark, we are being served frozen yoghurt by floating balloon cotton balls with cartooney smiley faces,” Donghyuck says flatly, pointing at their smiley hosts, who are indeed floating cotton balls with cartooney smiley faces. They bow at them cheerfully, then float away somewhere else. “And we went inside the moment we walked into the garden, which is...y’know, the loading pod for the game system.”

“Mark,” Ten says matter-of-factly to the others, who all nod in understanding. Even Jeno’s _ cat_, who Mark’s beginning to think is part of the game itself. Again, he gets the distinct feeling they’re talking about his amazing lack of self-awareness, than anything else.

“Okay, so apart from achieving our biggest dreams,” Renjun waves his eighth half-eaten frozen yoghurt in the air, “anything else we ought to do?”

Ten and Donghyuck exchange looks. 

“We might have a chance if we play our cards right,” Donghyuck says carefully. “There’s this organization that—"

“Donghyuck,” Ten warns, widening his eyes. 

They look at each other some more.

“I’m sick of this,” Renjun turns to Jaemin, “hey, can you read their minds?”

“Can’t,” Jaemin says dreamily, “I’m too powerful to do such things. Even Irene says so.”

“This is useless,” Renjun tells Jeno’s cat, who purrs in agreement. “Everyone here except for us are useless.”

At Chenle’s affronted “_hey _ ”, Renjun amends: “except for Chenle. He’s extra, _ extra _ useless. Okay—okay, I’m kidding, please do not blow my ears out.”

“So there’s this organization that can potentially help us,” Donghyuck declares finally. For some reason, he has Ten's head under a headlock. 

“Donghyuck, I’m telling you. This is a bad idea,” Ten says from somewhere below his armpit.

“They said Leonardo da Vinci’s ideas were wack too, and look at us now,” Donghyuck counters, “Alright, listen. There’s an organization which Ten and I are a part of. They’re the _ Brotherhood _ of mutants, and they take in all mutants regardless of who they are and what they are. If we escape now, we might be able to make it—"

“Negative,” Renjun vetoes immediately, “Our contracts specifically say that we have to abide by whatever SM decides to do with us, and it only expires if we graduate or if we voluntarily leave—which has a _ lot _ of paperwork involved and takes six months to accomplish. We could be sued, which might leave our family to deal with the consequences.”

Donghyuck deflates. “Oh god, I’m sorry—that completely slipped my mind. Well, shit,” he rubs his face, “I’ve...got nothing. Wait! What if Brotherhood takes in all of our families?”

Jeno searches his face. “Donghyuck, this isn’t like you. You’re getting agitated.”

“I’m not agitated!” Donghyuck trills agitatedly, “I’m fine!”

“Hyuck?” Jeno calls again softly. 

“It’s just,” Donghyuck sits down, defeated. “We’re going to be in the public eye. We’re going to be exposing ourselves to the public, even though we’re mutants. All our lives we’ve been taught to hide ourselves because we’re freaks and we’re a danger to society. We debut, and people will know us. They won’t know _ us_, but they’ll know _of_ us. And that just makes it even more dangerous if we get found out…”

Mark immediately sidles over to his side, gently uncoiling his tightly clenched fist from where he’s been clenching so hard, it left nail imprints on his palm. “Hey...it’s going to be alright. You said once that SM will do everything in their power to profit. _ We’re _ the profits this time. SM will never let anything happen if it means it tarnishes their name.”

Donghyuck looks at him in wonder. “I said that during our fourth year,” he says slowly, “you weren’t supposed to remember anything past second year…” he looks at Jaemin for confirmation.

“I...I think I’m starting to remember things by myself,” Mark says. It’s true. A lot of things have started making a lot more sense the longer he stays with them. Like the missing slots of puzzle pieces slowly connecting themselves into the set. Jaemin had given him the first few pieces, and it was enough to cause a domino effect for the rest of the pieces. 

“But,” Donghyuck says haltingly, looking confused. “It’s not supposed to—"

“Hooray!” Chenle cheers, latching on to Mark’s back and clinging to him like a very cuddly, very hyper koala. “Mark hyung’s starting to remember things again! Maybe we could play mutant basketball again one of these days!”

“I can’t control my power,” Mark reminds him, “how can it be mutant basketball if only one of us can use their power?”

“It’s mutant basketball for _ me_.”

  
*

It's much later, when they've all retired to their respective rooms, and Mark is left ambling through the halls because this place is just unnecessarily huge and he's hopelessly lost trying to locate his room, when he hears it.

Jaemin and Donghyuck. The two of them were sitting side by side, facing the lake, with Donghyuck's head perched on Jaemin's shoulder. They were fifty meters away from him, but somehow Mark's able to see and hear them clearly. 

"Mark's starting to remember things on his own," Donghyuck states quietly. His eyes were closed in a state of tranquility, and his arms were folded across his chest.

"I suppose so," Jaemin replies, just as quietly.

"You didn't recover any of his memories of me."

Jaemin stills. "I s'pose so," he repeats warily. He eyes Donghyuck, whose eyes were still stubbornly closed, like he didn't want to see anything anymore. His arms hugged his body tighter. "What do you have to say about that?"

"I think," Donghyuck constructs his words carefully, "you have your secrets, and I have mine. What you say and do are none of my business."

"I wish it was though," Jaemin confesses lowly, his tone too soft for Donghyuck to hear, though it rings crystal clear in Mark's ears, as though he was right there next to them. He swallows the bile in his throat, and looks up to see...Chenle. 

Chenle was crouched down by the staircase, his posture still and unmoving. He motions Mark to come closer to him, without opening his eyes to check whether it really is him. Chenle, blessed with superior auditory and vocal senses, can hear and speak sound waves that are not accessible to the human ears. 

"The building is talking to me," Chenle once said, back when Mark was in his third year and Chenle had been a first year. Mark remembers how small Chenle had looked, how excitable he was. At night, he always wandered the hallways, in search for a "special sound" he always hears whenever the halls are silent and there's not enough people to drown out the sound.

Mark wonders what exactly Chenle hears most of the time. 

"They're telling me something about Haechan," Chenle speaks up, voice coming out wispy and almost lost to the wind. He still had his eyes closed, listening carefully to unheard voices. "They say they did something to him. They drained him, of his powers, and his life force too."

"Hyung, I think they killed Haechan."

Mark feels something inside him snap and break.

* * *

**New boy group NCT DREAM announce their debut in October**

_ Housed under SM Entertainment and current students of SM’s academic institute for the performing arts, the group’s name NCT stands for ‘Neo Culture Technology’, a term coined by SM founder Lee Sooman to describe their recent expansion of the Hallyu localization project, NCT. _

** _See more: SM founder Lee Sooman on SMTOWN: Neo Culture Technology, set to take over the world_ **

_ SM Entertainment has revealed the faces of all seven of the members on September 16th via their _ _ official social media _ _ . According to SME, NCT Dream will be debuting this October with promises of unique and high-quality performances. _

_ Stay tuned for more of NCT Dream’s debut teaser images, coming soon! _

**View Comments**

**SORT: BEST**

**ramen_is_rly_good** _+1982, -34_

they’re all so cute. this is sm so we can expect a++++ content too. fighting nct dream!

**Goliath** _+640, -62_

Good luck to them. Based on the debut teasers, they seem to have a cute concept, which is interesting. Cute concepts are hardly done right in male groups but I think they can do it bc of their young ages

**super wookie** _\+ 329, -10_

you never really know what ur gonna get when ur working with sm

> **Guest**_replied to _ **super wookie:**
> 
> True

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **(9) Two: Telepathy, Body transformation**  
The ability to read minds, communicate mentally and project thoughts into others' minds. She is also capable of transforming into an organic diamond state with enhanced strength and durability which suppresses her telepathy.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: One of her former students had unearthed one of her most precious secrets: she used to be a highly successful underwear model who went by the name "Irene". Since then, almost everybody now refers to her by her model name. She has expressed on many occasions her deepest wishes to demolish the male student who had uncovered her secret._


	5. leader mark is back and he's ready to...brood?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tw: anxiety attack**

Light pierces through the darkness.

A lone figure stood in the very center. Intense power radiated off of him in tremors, powerful energy pulsating from him in seismic waves that rip through the curvature of spacetime. All around him, utter devastation strikes as foliage is forcibly uprooted, as the ground itself shook with the force of a thousand terrestrial convulsions, as the wind whips up a fury that called together the wrathful squalls.

The building—the so-called impenetrable fortress that can withstand the forces of nature and mankind combined—breaks easily, cleanly, cut in halves right in the very middle, as a fissure forms underneath. Debris falls down like a rain of destruction. Dust particles cloud the air, and block the sky, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can be seen nor heard in the domain of obliteration, save for the sounds of ruin, and the tiniest of sounds, almost inaudible, traveling through the chaos. 

The boy—for he was just a boy—falls down, and everything is silent once more.

*

“Shit, he’s out cold.”

“Well, if you think about it—he’s just been booked and busy lately. Creating the apocalypse, _ hello? _ Making his very own real life porn fantasy come true? And now, accidentally destroying our dorms? And then getting screamed at by Chenle’s supersonic? Can’t blame the guy.”

Mark groans. Every part of him was in pain. Trying to sit upright, pain flares in his upper torso, and he soon gives up on trying to sit. Or open his eyes. Or like, anything, really. Ugh, _everything_ was painful, even the parts of his body he didn't even know were capable of feeling pain.

With a gargantuan effort, he opens his eyes to see...the end of the world.

And by the end of the world, he just means Donghyuck. Accompanied by Chenle and Jaemin. Oh, and also the devastated ruins of what used to be their outrageously huge dorms.

“What happened?” he tries to ask, but it comes out as a garble of incomprehensible noises.

Chenle, thankfully, interprets it correctly: “oh, hey, hyung! Good morning! You just went on a rampage! You would have destroyed this entire area of Seoul, if I hadn’t knocked you out with my super awesome powers.”

“He screamed at you until you collapsed, he means.”

A memory hits him, and Mark abruptly sits up, ignoring the searing flash of pain in his upper torso as he does so. “Haechan?” he implores.

The trio suddenly falls silent, and it’s all the answer he needs. 

Mark lets out a shallow breath. Truthfully, he doesn’t even know _ why_. It’s not like he even knew Haechan for long, but—the dull ache in his heart tells him that it's _his_ fault, it's all his fault. _ He _ was the one who brought Haechan into the world, and it was _ his _ fault Haechan was subsequently killed. 

And—Haechan...was a part of Donghyuck, and by extension, a part of him as well. He feels like something had been ripped away from the very core of his soul. 

“It’s all my fault.”

Immediately, he’s kicked by the side. Ah, more pain.

“_Donghyuck, be careful, you dolt—he broke his ribs—"_

“It’s _ not _ your fault,” Donghyuck says, fiercely, crouching down to Mark’s level and leveling him with a glare that has Mark gulping. “It’s not your fault, okay? This—everything that’s happening, is _ way _ beyond what any of us can control and the only thing we should be doing is surviving. We’re still here, and we’re still breathing, and _ that’s _what’s important.”

“It is,” Mark insists stubbornly, “everything I’ve done up to now is what’s causing all this mess. That’s why you had me locked up in an alternate reality so that I couldn’t hurt others, right? But I still did, with the asteroid."

There’s silence again, but this time, it’s a silence so tense, like a rubber band stretched taut, about to give in, and it’s all Mark can do to not shrivel under Donghyuck’s incredulous stare.

“That’s what you said,” he persists, quieter this time, “that’s what you told me, before you had Jaemin erase my memories and had me locked up in a separate reality.”

_(“What makes you think you belong here, in this world? Everything happens _ exactly _ as you picture it! You want this to happen? Boom, it happened! You don’t belong here, Mark. You’re just making things worse. Everyone’s going to end up miserable because of you. You’re the only one who’s going to be happy.” _

_ “Is that what you really feel?” _

_ A derisive snort. “ _ You _ tell me. After all, this world belongs to you, doesn’t it?”)_

“Your memories have fully returned,” Donghyuck lets out a soft exhale. 

Mark nods. “Guess I returned to the world I don’t belong in,” he says bitterly, “_You _ brought me back.”

“Mark—"

“Save it. We’ve got bigger things to deal with,” Mark interrupts, tearing his gaze away from him. “SM’s debuting us in a few months’ time. That means we’ve got to dedicate almost all of our time practising, with little time for anything else, much less a revolution.”

“This is my mess and I’m going to deal with it. I’m sorry for dragging everyone into this, but right now, what we need is cooperation from everyone. I guess we don’t really need full transparency, because,” he stops pointedly, drinking in the guilty faces before him, “everyone has their own motives, apparently. All we need is to cooperate. That’s it. Let’s go along with SM’s plan, be the perfect idols. Because if we fail, if the public doesn’t like what they see, we go straight to the basement, where Haechan just went to.”

“Is that clear?” he finishes. 

A chorus of “yes” meets his ears, though all their faces stare at the ground, rather than at him.

  
  
*

A waffle is being waved in front of his face.

Mark is forcibly brought back to reality (_reality _ reality, not like reality, what we previously thought of as _ his _reality). What used to be so confusing now made perfect sense. What he wanted so desperately, were answers. And boy, did he get those answers. 

Two years ago, he had his heart broken by the boy he’d fallen head over heels for. He's talking _Bonnie and_ _Clyde_ level of head over heels. He's talking countless poems and scribbles in his journals dedicated to flowery declarations of love. Add to the fact that he was an angsty hormonal teen going through both his emo phase and puberty. Donghyuck was, and still very much is, as love-adled teen!Mark would say: _the topic and the subject of everything (uh no)._

And immediately following after that, he had his memories erased, seconds before his powers had wildly erupted from within him, leading to him creating a pocket reality of dullness, of monochrome colors and faceless people. It was safe, but without the colorful dreams and the gleaming aspirations and the warmth of friendships that have been severed from his memory, _his_ world was just—colorless. 

In his heartbreak, he had created an alternate reality, a world he believed _ he _belonged to. A world of dullness, of blandness. 

And while their motives for doing so still evaded his mind, he can’t help but feel utterly betrayed by two of the people he had trusted the most. 

Anyway, a waffle is being waved at his face and the arm that was extending said waffle was growing rather impatient, so Mark grabs the offered waffle, muttering a “thanks” as Jeno, owner of impatient arm, sits beside him.

They were practicing their choreography for their debut, as idols.

It’s been one week since Mark had destroyed the entire dormitory, and subsequently restored it back to its previous splendor. Reality warping did have its benefits, after all. 

It was strangely...easy. To control his powers, to manipulate the world around him according to what he saw fit. It didn't always go the way he planned; sometimes it took a while for it to happen. But, nevertheless it did. It always did. All he had to do was _think_. And reach in to the endless reserves of energy that seemed to pulsate from within him constantly, amping him with the energy he needs. It was like he was his very own shitty canned instant coffee, except _significantly _better. 

And...it’s been one week of silence from Donghyuck, and hurt glances from Jaemin. 

And while Mark does feel bad—scratch that, he feels downright _ awful_. He was supposed to be their leader, the one who’s supposed to lead and inspire their own little ragtag team formed from within the very institution that promised them their dreams but gave them nothing. It had started out as a little club, because they were all _ tired_. Tired from all the academic workload, the training, the constant reminder that _ this _ is the only world they belong in, because the world outside had already cast them away as outsiders.

_ Dear Dream_, they’d called themselves. After their shared dream that has led them to where they are right now. The dream that had served as their inspiration, as their vision, for the hopes of the future. 

And they’re debuting as NCT _ Dream_. It was like a cruel joke.

NCT was SM’s Hallyu project. It was publicly marketed as SM’s global strategy to reach global audiences, hoping to inspire, to bring together people of all backgrounds and all nations—united as one. 

In all actuality, it was SM’s plan of world domination. 

It was actually supremely clever, if Mark thinks about it. SM took advantage of the mutants who have been cast aside, who have been left desperate to become someone useful in a society that so detested them, to find others like them. They gathered those mutants, pumped them with dreams and visions and hopes for a better future, and _marketed _them as idols.

Idols—perfect, untouchable masks. To graduate from SM’s school would mean debuting as an idol. An idol meant to lead, to inspire, to become the perfect aspirations of what humanity should look like. Idols are never meant to show signs of weaknesses. They _are_ the face of the public, representing the nation.

And while SM markets their idols, they _ profit_. It was an elaborate plan, layers upon layers of intelligent plans that have culminated in SM earning more and more money, enabling them to buy businesses, to profit, and to buy _ more _businesses. 

Training mutants to become stellar examples of what the top professionals in each field to look like as the students go on to become the top players in each of their fields, dominating it. They’ve already made themselves known in the entertainment business, with the idol business, as well as in the academic fields, with various mutants leading research centers. 

Even in the military. In fact, Renjun used to study in a military academy, training mutants to become weapons, before he ran away—claiming a knee injury—and, lured by SM’s vision of becoming the shining beacon of hope for everyone and the promise that he will find his home there with people like him, made his way to SM.

It was a pretty depressing world Mark escaped. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” Jeno interjects into Mark’s downward spiral of thoughts.

Mark makes a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat. 

“Okay, I’ll talk then. My lower back is _ killing _ me, hyung. All of this dancing is reminding me that I am not as young as I used to be. Every night I lie in bed, surrounded by ice packs to numb the pain, with Renjun’s fire melting all of my ice packs in an instant, which leaves me _ miserable _ and in pain. So I drown my sorrows in soggy ramen noodles, which manager hyung scolds me for because it makes my face look bloated but honestly—_this is what _I normally look like!”

“Hey, Jeno,” Mark says, when Jeno takes a deep breath, poking at his own cheeks, murmuring positive affirmations about how he _doesn't_ look bloated. “Did you know about it?”

“About what?”

Mark gestures to himself with vague hand motions. “About what they did to me? Like, different realities and stuff.”

“Did you finally get your memories back?” Jeno looks at him with wide eyes. “Cool! ...I have no idea what you’re talking about, though. I just know that Hyuck took you to a safe place."

“So it was Donghyuck’s idea then,” Mark says bitterly. “His and the Brotherhood’s.”

“You know,” Jeno begins slowly, carefully, “I can’t even begin to know what it feels like to have gone through what you’ve been through, hyung. But—all of us here… we’ve gone through periods of time where we can’t help but think that all we’re ever good for is to become pawns of powerful people.”

"That's...true."

“In the beginning, you kind of get the sense that you’re given these powers for a special reason. Like you’re meant to be a superhero, like in the comics and in the games, and everyone will look up to you because you just _ inspire _people and keep them safe."

Jeno clenches his fist, his own waffle lying discarded on the floor. "But in reality, people, they — they just take advantage of you. They — they use you for their own gain. They’re not even scared of—of you, they're not scared of you, not until you—you threaten to use your powers against them…and it's—it's, it's just—"

“Jeno?” Mark says carefully. 

Jeno’s face looked troubled, and he was taking rapid, shallow breaths. He was clutching his chest, as though he was in pain.

“Jeno,” Mark calls, forcing himself to keep calm, to mask the panic beginning to bubble under his own skin. _What was going on?_

He steadies his breath, rubbing soothing circles into Jeno’s back. “It’s alright, I’m here—it’s me, Mark. It’s going to be okay, stay with me, Jeno. Stay with me. Nice and steady, look at how I’m breathing. We’re going to breathe together, alright? One...two...three, there we go. That’s great. You’re doing great...”

Jeno, slowly, calms down. His pupils were blown out, eyes wild and frenzied. He breathes exactly as Mark had told him to, and eventually his breath steadies.

“Do you need anything?” Mark keeps his tone low, careful.

“I,” Jeno tries to say. He shakes his head as the words refuse to come out, and Mark continues to rub soothing circles on his back, helplessly. 

Eventually, he slumps down onto the floor, breathing harshly. “I’m good,” he says, noticing the look of distress on Mark’s face. “I’m fine. Just give me a few minutes. It’s been a while since I...talked about it with someone.”

“What was that?” Mark asks carefully, after a few moments had passed and Jeno looked alright again.

“I...used to be in a criminal organization,” Jeno confesses lowly, clenching his fists. “I accidentally broke one of their—prized possessions, and instead of killing me there on the spot, they offered me a place in their ranks. Said I could repay my damage like a grownup. Once I paid back my debt, they would let me go.”

“They...used me to help their heists.”

“Jesus,” Mark breathes. 

“Eventually I did repay them. But they kept coming back, and I couldn’t say no because they had my family’s details and they know where we live….but...someone from SM talked to them. I don’t know how, but after that, they never bothered me again.”

“Does anyone else know about this?”

Jeno takes a while to answer. “Donghyuck does…”

_ Of course he does_, Mark can’t help but think bitterly.

“He...helps me a lot,” Jeno lets a small smile creep on his face. “He plays video games with me, and sometimes, when the thoughts get too loud, he shape-shifts into a cat and lets me pet him because he knows being around cats calm me down…Jaemin knows too. He doesn’t say anything, but he just kind of sticks by my side and refuses to leave me alone.”

Mark swallows down the sudden rush of _ feelings _ that suddenly erupt in his chest.

It’s obvious, they’ve all been through a lot of shit in their lives, just by virtue of being born the way they are. They couldn’t help it, they just _ were_.

_ “This—everything that’s happening, is way beyond what any of us can control and the only thing we should be doing is surviving. We’re still here, and we’re still breathing, and that’s what’s important,” _Donghyuck had said, when he saw Mark was beginning to spiral downwards into the endless pit of self-loathing all of them were born into.

And he’s right. They’re all so young, so inexperienced, and so, so, so _ naive_. None of them know what to do in their current situation, instead putting their trust in the authorities, who all have their own objectives, who _use _them for their own personal gains.

For SM, that was achieving mutant superiority over the entire human race. By placing their mutant idols on a high pedestal, they were sending a subliminal message to the rest of the world: _ this _ is what the peak of humanity should look and act like. _ This _is the future. 

By keeping their students in tight leashes, rarely ever letting them outside in the world and limiting their contact with the outside world—they were only promoting the stark difference that exists as a border between mutants and humans. _ That is their world and this is ours_, they say. _ Until the time comes, we will never peacefully coexist in the same world_.

And the rest of them...so tempted by SM’s promise of hope, of becoming a family, united against a world that hated them, had unwittingly joined the game as pawns.

Donghyuck...was one of the few who hadn’t. 

Before he even entered SM, he had gotten himself entangled with _ Brotherhood_, an organization that believed so firmly in the idea that all humans and all mutants can exist peacefully. He refused to let them in on the details though, because he thinks they’d be better off not knowing.

Donghyuck is such a...selfish person, Mark thinks. Of course he’d shoulder all of the burden on his shoulders, believing that it was his own fate, his own destiny to face all of this by himself, just because he has the power of becoming countless people. 

He doesn’t know that he has a whole legion of people who would help him, if he just...dropped the mysterious act and _ let _ them.

“Where are you going?” Jeno asks, as Mark stands up.

“Calling for a group meeting,” is all Mark has to say. He has a few words to say to _ his _group. “Last one to the dining area has to buy chicken for the rest of us.”

  
*

“Donghyuck, go back to your original form, you’re not fooling anyone,” Mark tells a morose-looking Jisung, who immediately shifts to a morose-looking Donghyuck. “Also, you’re the last one, so you buy the chicken!”

Donghyuck does so without complaints, surprisingly. Every now and then, he would cast guilty looks at Mark’s direction, averting his gaze whenever he gets caught.

It’s funny how now that Mark refuses to let his eyes wander to Donghyuck’s, _ Donghyuck's_ the one who keeps looking back now. 

The chicken arrives, and the whole group is, mysteriously enough, perfectly silent and obedient, all of them sitting up straight, looking for all the world like perfect model students.

There's a conspicuous space left at the end of the table, where they left a platter of chicken wings. Mark swallowing, stands up.

“So last week, I got back my memories,” he starts, to the absolute surprise of no one. It’s so _ quiet_, and everyone is actually listening to him for once, and it’s starting to creep him out a bit. “So, um, i-in a few months, we’re—we’re going to debut...as a group! As NCT Dream! And—and, while it’s...an...honor to, um, to debut because it’s—it’s all of our dreams…”

He trails off awkwardly, looking at the others, who are looking back at him with pitying looks.

Jisung, very kindly, starts clapping a bit, which spurs Mark on. 

“Right!” he gulps, “While it’s an honor...we mustn't forget that...we’re still in SM! Evil! I mean—! Not _ evil_, as in, like, _ evil _ evil, but—oh shit, are we in a virtual reality? Can we talk about this?”

“I already blocked this place, hyung,” Jaemin offers quietly. “The others won’t hear anything from outside.”

“But—uh, Number One’s nullifying device?”

“Ten hyung destroyed it right after they snuck in our room that day,” Donghyuck says. 

“O-okay,” Mark awkwardly says, “t...thanks.” 

They already function so well without him as their leader...he can’t help but think that maybe, maybe, he’s the unwanted one here.

They all shined so brightly, each one of them.

And yes, they're all so young and inexperienced and naive, but. They've managed to get this far. All of them. Spurned by their dreams of someday becoming a shining light of hopes and dreams for everyone, the way no one had when they were younger than they were now. 

“I just wanted to say that...you’re all doing great,” he lets out in a huge breath. “I’ve been gone for two years...and you’ve all done so well, every single one of you.”

“It hasn’t been the same without you though, hyung,” Jeno tacks on, reminiscent of what he first said to him, that fateful day when Mark got dragged back into this world in the first place.

The other nod their agreements.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck adds, voice hushed and quiet, almost inaudible. “We really missed you.”

His tone was really sincere, Mark could almost believe it, if it wasn’t for Donghyuck’s voice from two years go constantly echoing in his brain and making everything much more difficult to hear. 

“Right,” Mark says hollowly, clearing his throat. He had something to say, after all. “Anyway, we’re debuting as a group under SM, despite Chenle and Jisung not even graduating yet,” he looks at the two youngest of the group. “This means you’re both only allowed to promote until after ten p.m., as is the curfew. You’re both still expected to keep up with your homework _ and _ your training as well as promoting.”

“Yes, hyung,” Chenle and Jisung say in unison. 

“And, this goes without saying but...we should all do our best. While we’re just playing a pawns in this game, we should do our best. After all, we’re in this industry because we want to someday serve as an inspiration for everyone, right?”

_ This is how art is supposed to be—to serve as an inspiration to everyone. Artists are those who wield this artistic power, in order to become the vision of a new world, _one of the board of directors had said, back during Mark’s first year, at the welcoming ceremony. 

Yeah, that’s how art is supposed to be. 

“We were all brought together because we all shared the same dream: to _ inspire_. To become the reason others keep on dreaming. And — and that’s what we’re going to do, that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Mark stands up, and with a burst of passion, yells, at the top of his lungs, the chant that had gotten them this far, the chant that kept all of them together, with him as their leader: “_YO DREAM!” _

_ “Jeorreo juja, FIGHTING!” _

  
*

“Mark.”

Mark turns. 

Donghyuck walks toward him, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his hoodie. His hair—wavy ashy hair—was tousled, as though he’d run his hands over it several times. 

He looked...like a fallen angel. Like someone who had his wings cut off, bound to the earthly realm where he doesn’t belong because he belongs to a world of pristine perfection, of united order, of perfectly maintained gardens upon gardens of flowers in perfect bloom in all seasons. Like someone who threw all of that away, to become someone he is not.

“Mark,” he says again, falling into a stop as he comes out into the light. His eyes, always so guarded, like an almighty guardian sent to protect sacred secrets not to be seen by mere mortals, were wide open. “You called me out here.”

Mark breathes in, deep, unhurried. “I’ll get right to the point,” he says, to which Donghyuck nods.

“I won’t ever forgive you for what you did to me.”

Donghyuck inhales. His voice, steady, against the anxiety that radiated off of him in tremors that shook his body, sounds as clear as ever as it travels to Mark's ears. “I understand.”

"I suppose you don't want to explain why you did it?" Mark's tone is sharp, sharper than he ever remembers it being. 

As expected, Donghyuck shakes his head, pursing his lips. His head was tilted downwards, gaze directed to the ground. Mark wonders, if maybe, the reason why Donghyuck liked playing chess so much was so that he could feel the illusion of control that he doesn't have, that _none_ of them have. 

“You know what you did, so—so...I don’t think I need to say anything else. There’s—there's one other thing I want to ask of you,” Mark stumbles over his words, as he stares at who he used to think was the central star of his universe.

The sun stares back at him. 

Donghyuck’s natural form. His true body, without all of the masks, without anything to serve as a shield against him.

Mark had only seen his natural form once during all of their six years together. It had been only a brief glimpse, but the image had stuck itself to Mark's mind, like a haunting memory of an untold history. 

He'd taken to calling Donghyuck the _sun_, because he is. His body, brilliant, resplendent, and gleaming in all its golden splendor. His eyes, burning flares of magnetic fields.

Beautiful. Just, beautiful. 

Mark faintly remembers a memory, a conversation with Jaemin. 

_"...he sees himself as something so...unnatural. So grotesque…”_

_“That’s why he never stays in one form for too long,” Mark breathes._

Donghyuck had always wielded his words like a particularly sharp and jagged weapon, sometimes as defense, if he feels the need to, but oftentimes he liked to use it as his main choice of weapon. He was a stronghold, with words as his main choice of weapon — flowery and smooth when he needs it to be, and _vicious_, hurling insults when necessary—and countless illusions as armor. He'd always been particularly vulnerable to the art of words, letting his masks hide his true feelings from where the words had cut deep.

He was letting Mark see him at his most vulnerable. He was letting Mark see the effects of his words on him. 

Donghyuck, who's never let anyone close to him before, who hides behind faces upon faces of deception, had torn down all of his masks, just for Mark. It was like the signal of an end.

Suddenly, Mark feels like crying. He doesn't want it to end. 

“I—I want to see my parents,” he says, whispers against the soft chimes of the wind. “If you’ll let me.”

“Of course,” Donghyuck murmurs. His hair, glinting golden against the silvery glow of the moonlight, shines brighter than anything else. As is the rest of him, golden and belonging to lands of everlasting summer, of sunny paradise, and of seasalt ocean waves. “They’re with you in your world, you know. Everyone important to you is there.”

_ Dream is important to him too, doesn’t he know that? _

“How do I get back there? How did _ you _ get there?”

Donghyuck swallows. “Johnny and Dongyoung. You know them as your mentors in your world, but they’re members of the Brotherhood. Johnny can summon portals that can cross time and space. They routinely check up on you to make sure…”

“That I don’t cause mass destruction?” Mark bitterly finishes for him. 

Judging by Donghyuck’s lengthy silence, that was exactly it. 

“I really miss you, you know,” Mark says quietly, not missing Donghyuck’s sharp intake of breath at his sudden confession. “I do. I—fuck, Hyuck, I even created _ Haechan_, because...even with my memories gone, even in a whole different world, you're—you're still...”

Donghyuck lets out a smile, sad, broken, but still so, so, exquisite. “He looks nothing like me.”

“He _ is _ you.”

“He’s like, all of my good qualities and none of my bad ones, crammed into a body that looks _ somewhat _ similar to me. And he got killed. By SM. Like, alright, okay, message _sent_ and _received_, goddamn.”

"He is you," Mark says softly, swallowing, daring to step closer to him. "Haechan, Lee Donghyuck, whoever you are. You're always going to be important to me."

"I'm none of those," Donghyuck takes a step back, eyes shuttering. "I'm—I'm no one."

"You're everything."

Donghyuck lets out a shaky breath, aims a smile at Mark. "I'll talk to Johnny hyung," he promises, "your powers have become really strong, but traveling to different dimensions is tricky. It's—it's better to just ask him."

"And...Mark. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I—I really am."

And with that, Donghyuck puts on a mask, and with one last look at Mark, walks away. The signal of an end.

* * *

**Earth’s near miss with ‘apocalyptic asteroid’ leaves scientists shaken and millenials disappointed**

  * If the asteroid had struck Earth, it would have resulted in a devastating damage that would have left Earth an uninhabitable planet. 

_ The Post _

Published: 7:44am, 27 May, 20XX

Shim Changmin was confused. On Monday, the scientist’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out “why everyone was panicking”.

“The calls made me so confused, I totally forgot about my instant noodles,” Changmin, one of the lead scientists at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, told The Post. 

Then he looked up the details of the disastrous space rock that had almost doomed humanity. 

“I was stunned,” he said. “I was super stunned. So stunned, my instant noodles got all soggy by the time I got back to it.”

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking and it had seemingly appeared “out of nowhere,” one of Changmin’s associates told _ The Post_.

“[E]verything in this world disappoints me,” an online post on popular social media app _ Twitter_, had said. "Even a f*ckin' asteroid."

“Anyone else think the asteroid kinda...sexy?” another asked provocatively, prompting an intense discussion underneath the original post.

The asteroid had seemingly "vanished" just yesterday night, while people were scrambling to get to say their goodbyes to one another, or posting on social media. Changmin had theorized that perhaps the asteroid had "gotten bored and just decided to disappear."

Scientists are still working on a verifiable solution as to the abrupt disappearance of the asteroid that had almost ended all life forms in the planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **(10) Johnny: Portal creation**  
The power to create a teleportation vacuum, colored purple, in which multiple people or objects can enter at the same time. He can also close the vacuum at will, any object that does not exit the vacuum as it closes will be cut off.
> 
> _DREAM TMI: Donghyuck once asked Johnny what happens to the people who get stuck when he closes the vacuum. Johnny had shrugged and said, completely nonplussed, "not my problem."_


	6. mark hasn't felt actual emotions in a long time and that's valid

Mark never really knew how to deal with emotions. Sure, they were there, the emotions, bubbling underneath the surface like the mismatched noxious fumes of chemical substances dumped into a sewage system underneath a bustling, lively, wondrous city.

But he didn’t exactly know how to _ deal _with them, per se. 

Back then, music had been his medium for these—_odd_—feelings. He listened to songs that would inexplicably tear at his heartstrings, he danced to convey the feelings written so clearly in the lyrical compositions of a melodic beat. Emotions were something music was so richly enfused with, and Mark wanted to be part of it, to be part of something that would touch the souls of any listener, no matter their backgrounds or history or culture. 

Without music though, he felt lost in that hypothetical sewage system of chemical death (this would make for an awesome punk-rock band name, he thinks). 

Until he met the rest of Dream. 

They’d been an odd bunch. All belonging to different backgrounds and cultures, yet they just _ clicked,_ for whatever reason. Maybe it was the music bonding them together, maybe it was the feeling of finally belonging to something, after years of not belonging anywhere else.

It was belonging in something that didn’t assign you a place in a world of strictly definite categories where _ everything _ had to be put into its proper place.

And it was with them, where he finally learned the names of all these perplexing feelings that constantly threaten to engulf his entire being, what with the intensity of how he feels.

It was Donghyuck who’d pulled him into the group in the first place. All smiles and mocking taunts that goaded him into taking steps where he previously hadn’t ever been in. 

For the longest of times, music had been an oasis for Mark, and Dream? Well, Dream was the bottomless blues of the sky, so high and so free, up in the sky, with no limits and no bounds in sight. 

It was...freeing.

All of these sentiments were running through his mind as they were preparing for their debut. It _ should _have been hard, all of these nonstop dance practices, all of the strict diets they were told to adhere to, all of the dermatologist-recommended skincare routines they had to follow up with so that they could have glowing complexions.

But, well, Mark couldn’t bring himself to feel tired, not really, not when he was surrounded by his members. 

They were all working so _ hard_, with hardly ever a break in between all of their regime, but still, the others had still found ways to crack jokes, to mess with each other, to make everything feel lighter. 

If his life were to ever become a movie, Mark thinks he’d like it to contain every single moment he’d shared with them. It would make for a very unnecessarily long movie, and it would make people sleep, absolutely bored out of their minds, but he'd watch it, the entirety of it, no naps, no bathroom breaks. Even without popcorn. That's how much he appreciates them.

Though, maybe they could leave his moments with Donghyuck out of the movie. Those, he would like to keep for himself.

To selfishly keep those moments with himself, to re-watch it over and over all by himself. _ Selfish_, a part of his mind whispered at him, intent on making him feel shame, but Mark, again, can’t bring himself to care. Not really, because this was _ Donghyuck_, and Donghyuck belonged to everything and everywhere all at once. He was too big, too bright, to be kept in just one place. Least of all with _ Mark_. 

So. He’ll take whatever he can, and cherish it in private, away from prying eyes. Even in his journals, where he bore every part of his soul in written words, he never mentions him by name. Whenever he does, it was always hidden behind anonymous terms of endearment like _ idiot_, _ the most stressful thing that ever happened to me_, _ little devil_, and the like. 

They don’t talk much, him and Donghyuck. Not since that fateful day where they all but destroyed every remnant of what they used to be. 

Donghyuck had led him to the skies of beyond, and left him there. 

Mark, without his guide, did what he did best. He walled himself away from that venomous pit of sewage, and climbed back up to the comforts of a city bustling with laughter and music. 

  
*

Dance. 

A performing art consisting of purposefully selected sequence of rhythmic movement. This movement has aesthetic and symbolic value, and is used to express an idea or an emotion, releasing energy, or simply taking delight in the movement itself.

In medieval stories told by drunken old men in taverns, they tell tales of men stumbling into the land of the pixies, where the human is forced to partake in festivities and to dance until they are no longer able to stand, leading to death.

“DANCE!” Renjun bellows from somewhere below the searing flames of hellish descent.

To dance is to express an idea or an emotion. In this case, Mark is dancing to express his fight-or-flight response, triggered by sheer fear and the accompanying adrenaline rush a hunted prey might feel as they _ run _ for their lives. 

Yes. He is being hunted. And the predator is behind him, breathing heavily and harshly, a sign of the enduring chase of life they’re both forced to be subjected to, as the circle of life continues. In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion does not sleep. No one sleeps in the jungle. For the predator is everywhere and anywhere all at once. 

The predator is here, and he wields the mightiest weapon known to mankind, the weapon of utter destruction: his lanky limbs of pure muscle. 

“C’mon, Mark hyung,” Jisung cooes, his cute face hiding the glint of hunger, the predatory hunger that resides in all beasts. “Just one mistake. One misstep, and you’ll be dead.”

The great philosopher Aristotle once likened dancing to be man’s representative of his character as well as what they do and suffer. To suffer is mankind’s character, and Mark dances to embody this suffering. 

“Yeah, Mark,” Renjun coaxes, the fiery flames beside him highlighting his features in a way that would one day inspire Dante to write _ Inferno_, man’s descent into hell and back. “One misstep. Just one. And you’ll _ die_. Come on, we’re all dead now. It’s just you now. Nothing wrong with eternal damnation.”

_ Everything _is wrong with eternal damnation, Mark thinks.

Mankind exists in between the realm of the real and the unreal. While there exists the realm of the real, where all beasts dwell, the real of the unreal has the mystical qualities of everything that will lure man to his doom. 

All around him, he is surrounded by objects—all of which have been imbued with the magical veil of mystery that have enamored men—all, pointing straight at him, like the accusatory daggers of justice. 

“Death will come for all of us,” Jeno mournfully intones, taking a _ card _out of his pocket, charging it with kinetic energy that has it hurtling straight at Mark’s head.

And with a skillful move of his head, the choreographed routine of life and death, Mark evades it.

Life has its illusions as well. One must battle between the mists of alluring mirages that will lead them astray, because such is life. Clear destinations and pathways are laid down for everyone to step into, granted they don’t fall prey to the looming shrouds of apparitions that all men succumb to, just as how sirens used to lure sailors to their deaths by their beautiful visions and voices. 

Donghyuck — the very apparition of death_—_ and by death, he means a fucking _clown_ remniscient of Joker from the Batman series, even complete with that creepy ass smile—beckons him to the world of the undead. He holds out a hand, a _clown's _hand, extending it towards Mark. 

But no. He must not fall for it. Because Mark has a clear path, and to walk that path, he must _ dance_. 

The unholiest of shrieks enter his ears, and for a moment, a brief _ terrifying _ moment, Mark almost stumbles. The dance of life, of vigor, of vitality. To perfect this choreographed dance is to reach his dreams of becoming higher, higher, higher. To the ascent. 

“Ugh, I almost got him,” Chenle clicks his tongue in annoyance. 

Like all things in this earthly plane, all things must come to an end. The elaborate dance, teetering between the balance between delicate and coarse, just as how life always maintains a balance between all forces in the world—slowly comes to an end, the last reverberating musical notes fading into the stillness of the room.

Mark slows to a stop, as he kneels down, the finishing pose of the dance that determined his fate.

Sweat drips down the sides of his face, as he forces himself to keep the smile plastered on his face the entire duration of the dance. His breathing is the only thing that can be heard in the room. Everything and everyone slows to a stop, as the victor emerges. 

The perfect dance. 

Mark had done it. He’d claimed it as his own, as the dance of the victors. The choreography for their debut song. 

Basking in the glory of victory, Mark stays in his position for a long time—perhaps hoping that the universe will get a nice screenshot of this exact moment, and play it in his funeral, perhaps he just wants to stay in that position to avoid the wrath of the vengeful souls of the defeated.

“Mark hyung won this round,” Renjun announces, side-stepping Jaemin’s motionless body on the floor (he was supposed to be the referee but someone decided to knock him out, just for fun. That someone was Chenle.) and whistling sharply to get everyone’s attention. 

“Aw, we really lost to _Mark_?” 

“Ugh, if we lost to Mark hyung, maybe we should spend a moment of reflection on our mistakes...”

_ I won, but at what cost_, Mark grimly thinks, as he approaches the disgruntled group of losers. Mark won, but...did he really? He ponders over the merits of winning as he watches the rest of them take it really severely, even engaging in an intense discussion over how they should really reflect on themselves after losing to him.

They had been playing a game, whilst preparing for their debut stage. The goal was to dance the entire choreography perfectly, and without any mistales whatsoever. If one were to make mistakes, they immediately lose the game, and can distract the remaining players to “make it more interesting”. Distracting, in Dream's vocabulary, apparently meant being in the throes of danger, as they all reverted to using their powers to threaten, to blackmail, or to intimidate into submission.

Barely two seconds into the game, Jaemin stumbles over the steps, and was subsequently bullied into becoming the referee to prevent anyone getting hurt. Thirty seconds later, he gets knocked out after Chenle lets out a truly wretched cry that took out almost everyone, save for Mark and Jeno. 

Jeno watches the sleeping Jaemin with mild interest. “He’s starting to drool."

Mark is disliking the sudden glint in Chenle’s eyes when he sees him open his mouth. “Chenle, behave. Don’t do anything.”

Chenle clamps his mouth shut, eyes wide and innocent. 

“I think we did really well,” Renjun goes over to the camera situated in the front of the room to review today’s dance practice. The rest of them follow him, with their towels and water bottles at hand, intent on monitoring their performance for the day. “Really well. Woah, how come we’re so good? Look, look, we’re so in-sync!”

It’s been countless hours spent poring over the steps, over the songs, and countless nights spent worrying about what debuting would hold for them in the near future. Mark hasn’t had a decent night of sleep since—actually, he doesn’t even remember the last time he had a decent rest. 

Which is—actually kind of normal for him. But also, kind of sad?

The same goes for all the other members. None of them were really fond of sleeping these days, plagued by poisonous thoughts and anxieties and worries as they make their way to the stage, the start of their career. 

Which is made all the more anxiety-inducing, if he thinks about the true nature of them being mutants, and how it might all come crashing down at just the right camera angle positioned at exactly the right time. It could expose any one of them at any given moment. 

(“That won’t happen,” Ten had snorted, when Mark had expressed his worry one day. “Dispatch — that's the news media outlet, by the way—is all up SM’s ass. They’ll only release content if it benefits them in some way. Be it fame, money—and SM’s got a _ lot _of that—or just good ol' publicity.”)

When he isn’t being plagued by his inner demons (they plague him a lot, and they’re so _ mean_), Mark spends the rest of his time practicing, stressing over every little detail of their songs or their dance, and talking to the other members, helping them calm down—

“Are we done for today?” Donghyuck asks, after they had finished watching today’s dance practice, ‘oooh’-ing and ‘woah’-ing at all the moments their shoes squeaked at exactly the same times, hitting the hardwood floors at the exact same times. Satisfying. 

It was nearing ten p.m., and they just spent practically the whole day dancing, with little breaks in between for snacks and rest. Suddenly, Mark feels bad. Jisung and Chenle still had classes tomorrow morning. Sure, all of them had agreed to dedicating all of their spare time to get some practice in, but it was the leader's duty to make sure they weren't stretching themselves to their limits. Right now, he doesn't feel like a very good leader...especially with how frigid the air is around them, a stark contrast to the easyness and the lightness of their usual dynamics. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Mark clears his throat, “good work today, guys! Let’s call it a day and get some rest!”

The words had hardly left his mouth when Donghyuck grabs his bag and his water bottle and makes a beeline for the exit, not even sparing a glance behind him. The door closes with a quiet little _ click._

There’s an awkward silence as Mark tries his best to occupy himself with staring at the wall. He can feel the others’ questioning gazes boring holes into the side of his face, but he steadfastly ignores it and instead nods approvingly at the impeccable design of the...wall.

Damn. That’s some really nice woodwork. People should really appreciate walls more.

“Everything okay?” Renjun’s quiet voice interrupts his connoisseur viewing of the walls. 

“Never better,” Mark lies, squinting at the little crack in the wall, where some of the paint has peeled off. What a truly inspiring piece. Perhaps the artist wanted to convey the cracks of a mask, an otherwise perfectly crafted surface marred by a single deficiency. 

“Alright,” Renjun says slowly, clapping him on the shoulder, and nodding to the slumbering Jaemin. “I’ll leave Jaemin to you then. G’night, Mark.”

Renjun nods to the others, who all nod unsurely and, packing all their belongings and casting worried glances at Mark, leaves the room.

Mark sighs, peeling his eyes away from the wall. 

Silence envelops the room once again, save for Jaemin’s quiet little snores. 

Jaemin doesn’t snore. Actually—scratch that, Jaemin doesn’t even _ sleep_.

“You can get up now,” Mark tells him, nudging him a little with his foot. “I know you just pretended to get knocked out to get out of practice.”

At his accusation, Jaemin lets out an exaggeratedly loud snore, and, letting out a (fake) yawn, sits up and grins at him. 

“Why, hello there, hyung!” Jaemin says brightly. 

“Hey,” Mark gingerly sits down beside him on the hardwood floors. “So?” he prompts, watching Jaemin smile at nothing in particular. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I don’t always have ulterior motives, you know,” Jaemin protests lightly, “but, well, yes. I did want to talk to you about—_it_.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific. What’s _ it? _”

“What happened two years ago,” Jaemin clarifies, “and what I know about it.”

There’s a lump in Mark’s throat at the reminder. Ah yes, there’s one more thing that plagues his thoughts late at night. 

“I already know the gist of it,” Mark says, and if his tone is a bit shaky, Jaemin doesn’t let on that he noticed. “You did it to protect me, and stuff. I get it.”

“Basically, yeah, that’s it,” Jaemin concurrs, “but first things first, I just...wanted to ask you how you're feeling."

How _is_ Mark feeling? He doesn't feel like anything, and the dull ache in his heart that hadn't quite disappeared ever since he and Donghyuck talked, was just that. A dull ache. "I'm fine," he swallows. _Why does he feel like he's lying though?_

Jaemin looks at him knowingly, but doesn't prod any further. Which Mark is grateful for. 

“Alright," Jaemin says, "there's one other thing I wanted to talk to you about, and it's...something I should have told you about a long time ago, back when you were still recovering your memories. You must have sensed it...the barriers in your mind that were holding your powers back all these years..."

"Let me guess," Mark's tone takes on a bitter edge, "you were the one who put it there?"

Jaemin inhales a sharp intake of breath, readying himself for whatever it is he was going to say. “I didn't. Mark, I was the one who released it.”

“What?”

“When I first met you, I could tell that there were strong mental barriers in your mind, and try as I might, I couldn’t get past it. At first, I thought it was a dormant part of your power, which you didn’t discover yet, so I left it alone. It kept getting weaker as the years went by, as though you were trying to fight against it. And eventually, I noticed it was always particularly weaker whenever you were around Donghyuck.”

“And I already knew you had a big, fat crush on him then, so I thought, ‘oh maybe his power is related to his emotions’, so I kept keeping tabs on you, just to be sure. But then, we got older, and still, your powers still didn’t manifest. I kept worrying, because I’ve heard stories of how mutants went insane because their powers manifested too late, and they couldn’t handle the rush of power that had so suddenly appeared in them. Their bodies couldn't keep up with the sudden changes in them. I still didn’t do anything then, except worry. But, one night, while I was about to go to bed, I heard you thrashing about in your sleep.”

“You were having a nightmare. It was so intense...some of your thoughts leaked out and it was so filled with _ pain._ I remember just being unable to move for a few minutes because of the unbearable pain, and I just wanted to make it easier for you. So I...went inside your head and removed the psychic barriers. I was stronger then, and it was easier for me to remove them. Plus, it was already weakened from all those years. Anyway, it helped somewhat...because after that, you went back to sleep like nothing happened. But then, the next morning, Hyuck was _ panicking._”

“Why was he panicking?” Mark asks, his mind reeling from all of the onslaught of information.

Jaemin fixes him with a look. “He knew about the psychic barriers in your head. He said that you weren’t ready yet, and that by removing it so suddenly like that, your physical body wouldn’t be able to handle the massive stores of energy that were laid dormant for so long. He was terrified…”

“I,” Mark starts, then stops. His throat was so dry. “What are you saying?”

“I’m just saying my thoughts on what I think went down,” Jamein shoots him a weak smile. “There’s a lot of things we don’t really know, and Donghyuck’s right at the center of all these questions. The problem is, he just refuses to let us in on the happenings.”

There was something weird in his tone, it was almost like...

“You suspect him,” Mark breathes, because _ holy shit what the actual fuck is happening literally ever_. “You think he’s, like, in cahoots with someone…”

Jaemin sighs softly. “I do.”

“But...why?”

“Why?” Jaemin repeats questioningly.

“Why would you...go along with him? Why did you agree to—erase my memories? Why won’t you go inside his head and figure out just what is happening?”

There's a touch of irony that graced Jaemin’s smile, as he shakes head slightly and answers: “because I promised him that I wouldn’t. And, despite it all, I still trust him more than anything and anyone else in the world. If he thinks this is the right choice, then I...I won't hesitate to follow him."

Mark swallows. This—this was all too familiar. He remembers those years of lovelorn glances cast at Donghyuck’s direction, Jaemin’s willingness to go along with whatever mischief it is Donghyuck thought of. The two of them, Jaemin and Donghyuck, went way before SM. They had known each other since they were children, before Mark, before everybody else. 

“Y’know,” Mark begins unsurely, “The two of us...would never work out.”

“The two of us? You mean, you and me? Mark, I...don’t know what to say...”

“No! I mean! Not that you’re not my type, or—or anything! You’re everyone’s type! I _ mean_,” he wheezes, “you’re—you’re really handsome! And anyone would be lucky to have you!”

“Mark, calm down, I was just kidding,” Jaemin laughs. “You mean you and Hyuck.”

“Right,” Mark exhales, “There’s...nothing going on between us.”

“_Oh~ _is that right? Then how come I still see Hyuck in all his glory whenever I take a look at your dreams?”

“That’s—" Mark sputters indignantly, dread seeping into his mind. _How long had he...?_ “Classified information! I thought you aren’t supposed to read our minds!”

“Ah, but Mark...your brain is just too loud sometimes, you know? I can’t really help but listen in…plus,” Jaemin adds, “you get really graphic about his legs. It’s really inspiring. Made me see him in a new perspective.”

“That—I—no, but it’s just, well—"

“Don’t worry though,” Jaemin says, a familiar wistful look in his eyes. “We would never work out either.”

“Hey, kids,” a voice interjects into their conversation. 

Both of them turn to look at the source of the voice. Irene. 

Irene had been given the responsibility of being their manager for their debut stage, and as such, had taken it upon herself to surround them with the support crew she herself chose. There was her, the direct manager of Dream, and four other women, who all vaguely terrified Mark. There was Wendy, vocal director, whose voice sent Chenle into near _bliss_ the first time he heard it. Seulgi, dance instructor and overall head of the team dedicated to improving and planning their performances. Joy, in charge of the aesthetics team and the one primarily leading the production and planning of all their events. Yerim, the youngest, who despite being Mark's age, had shown superior technological skills and a flair for business that earned her a high position in the company, was in charge of the marketing and the overhead of their social media team.

Clad in an all white ensemble (Irene likes the color white), she strides into the practice room, brandishing a phone with a white (she really likes the color white) case at them.

“It’s almost eleven,” she stresses, with a severe look. “Do you know what that means?”

Mark exchanges a confused look with Jaemin, who looks just as confused as he does.

“It’s...almost our bedtime?” Jaemin tries. 

“_No_—alright, yes, that too. You kids sleep so late, it’s a nightmare, honestly. How do you expect to keep up with everything else that happens without a decent amount of sleep? Just the other day, I had to wrangle Jeno into his bed because he was still up _ gaming_. At five in the _ morning_. I understand that you all have your own methods of coping, but _ really now._ There’s a time and place for everything, but not right now.”

_ There’s a time and place for everything, but not right now. _ “Was...was that a _ Pokemon _ reference?” Mark stills, lost beyond all comprehension. 

“Yes, yes it was,” Irene says staunchly. “Why do you think _ I _ was awake at five in the morning? I was clearly playing too. Anyway, my point is that it’s _ eleven,_ and your debut music video is coming out in an hour.”

“_What._”

“I thought it was supposed to come out three days from now! According to the—the email Yerim sent me—”

“Mark,” Irene levels him with the disappointed gaze of a mother who had to witness her prepubescent son’s IQ lowering into dangerously low levels, to be replaced with raging hormones and emo punk songs. “Do you honestly believe anything that comes from Yerim? 

“She’s...she’s my friend? I think I believe her?”

“Mark, you poor soul,” Irene titters, “Don’t believe anything she ever says, _ especially _ when you’re friends with her. Come on, go and gather your members. Only if you want, of course.”

“I—I will!” Mark says, but then falters. “Ah, wait...should I? I already made them go...they must be really tired since I had us all practice practically the entire day...and Chenle and Jisung still have classes tomorrow too…”

“Mark,” Jaemin comfortingly places a hand on his shoulder. “Your concern is touching, really, but sadly, misguided. I can guarantee you that absolutely none of them are resting right now.”

  
*

Ten minutes of staggering back into the dorms, Jaemin is later proven right.

The sounds of raucous laughter reverberated into the halls even from a respectable distance of ten meters. Mark winces, thinking back to all of the student complaints he had to fend off back when they had first started rooming together. 

(“Everyone who wants to complain is welcome to challenge me to a duel to the death,” Donghyuck had formally declared a threat to the rest of the student body one fine, _ peaceful _ morning, as they were all gathering into the assembly. 

Plenty of people took him up on his offer, though Donghyuck never attended any of their arranged _ death _ battles.

“Hey, I only said they were _ welcome _ to challenge me to a duel,” Donghyuck later reasoned, “I never said I’d duel them to the _ death _, hyung. That’s against the rules, y’know. We’re prohibited from fighting on school grounds.”

“Donghyuck, there is a _ mob _ outside,” Mark had wheezed, thoroughly stressed out, piling all of their furniture against the door in an attempt to stave off the angry mob. “They want your head on a platter!”

Donghyuck wrinkled his nose. “My head on a platter? That’s not a fun way to die. Chenle, wanna try screaming so they’ll all go away?”)

Suffice to say, they had to completely soundproof their walls. And also, about a dozen rules were added to the school regulations, all thanks to their little group. Threats against the student population made during assembly while disguising oneself as one of the teachers were now strictly prohibited, as well as goading other students into duels to the death.

So, for them to make _ so much noise _ even with the soundproof walls...only meant one thing. 

They were all together.

Pushing open the doors, Mark and Jaemin step inside the threshold of the den...and are immediately bombarded with sheer _ noise_. 

“The video is about to be released, the video is about to be released,” Chenle is chanting, head haphazardly bobbing to a tune only he hears.

“Jisung, my laptop,” Jeno cries, “if you break it, _ I’ll _break down.”

Jisung, running around in circles for some unfathomable reason, is carrying Jeno’s laptop. “I won’t, I won’t!”

In the corner of the room is Renjun silently fiddling with his phone, though the temperature around him burns at a rate that would probably make them all go bald. 

There’s also a cockroach flying around the room, determinedly chasing after Jisung. Mark can only assume that it was Donghyuck, transformed into Jisung’s worst nightmare: insects that should not have been able to fly. 

Mark, with his all new powerful powers that can possibly shatter mankind, lets out a wave of _ pure stress_.

“Oh, what is this sudden miserable air…?”

“Hm, I feel...kind of...weird. What is this emotion and how can I make it go away?”

Mark clambers onto the couch, fully set on taking a much needed _ nap _ for at least ten minutes. 

“How’d you all know the music video was coming out today?” Jaemin curiously addresses the room at large. “Mark and I only just found out minutes ago.”

“Yerim sent out emails that had all of our debut itineraries, hyung, don’t you check yours?” 

“No, I don’t,” Jaemin replies with a cutesy shake of his head (Jeno, appalled at this display, turns the other way), “apparently Mark got the date wrong.”

“Oh, right, there was a little note at the end of the email,” Jisung remembers, flicking through his phone, “it says: ‘everyone except Mark, the music video will come out three days from now, at exactly twelve midnight. Tell Mark and you _ die _’. I wonder what Mark hyung did to deserve this kind of treatment from Yerim noona…”

Mark zooms in on Donghyuck (with his special Donghyuck tunnel vision). The back of his ears were red, a telltale sign of guilt. Donghyuck was flustered for some reason, and he makes a strangled noise at the back of his throat, making grabby motions for his phone and typing furiously.

“It’s okay,” Mark says instead, shaking himself out of his reverie. “It’s my fault. I should’ve talked to you guys more about the debut. Maybe it was Yerim’s way of making sure communication between us remains intact.”

“_Nooo_, it’s not your fault, hyung,” Chenle swoops down on him, tossing both of his hands across his back and effectively pinning him down on the couch. _ Oof_. The solid weight of Chenle leaning his entire weight against him was warm, albeit painful on his lower back. “It’s just this general air of misery around you, you know? Misfortune follows anyone who welcomes it, and you’re very welcoming. So it _is_ kind of your fault, but you just can't help it!”

“He’s right,” Renjun says, padding over to the couch and prodding them to make some room for him. “And it’s an issue that’s deeply embedded into you and should take a long time to get over, but just know that we’re, ahem, we’re here for you anytime, alright?” 

“Aww, look, he’s blushing,” Jaemin cooes, pinching Renjun’s cheek. “Look at him, look!”

“Quit it,” Renjun grumbles, swapping at Jaemin’s hands. He holds Mark’s gaze, then pointedly glances to the quiet Donghyuck. An unspoken _ we’ll talk about this later _ passes between the two of them, and Mark tries to hold back a sigh. 

Mark surreptitiously glances at Donghyuck, who, mercifully transformed back into human form, was still typing furiously on his phone, lips pursed tight. It was a magnificent change from the murderous roach crawling around and scaring Jisung off his wits just a few minutes ago. 

“Fifteen minutes remaining,” Donghyuck counts down, referring to the official release of their (first ever!!!) music video. 

Almost immediately, Jeno lets out a garble of nervous noises, voicing out what most of them must have been thinking. In Mark’s case, it was just normal, steady elevator music pleasantly humming inside his brain. 

It was the day all of them dreamt of. The release of their title track, that would announce the start of their career. It would be a permanent etch on their record, the title track that would kickstart it all. It was unnerving, and, simply, terrifying. 

When they recorded their vocals to be used in the tracks, Mark thought they’d done alright. He’d listened to the producers working on the songs, had listened to Wendy's advices with a focus of a champion. He’d pored all of the “youthful energy” in his voice, since their concept for the debut would be the innocence and purity of the youth. 

(Frankly, he didn’t feel very youthful. He hadn’t felt youthful in a long time.)

But. Worries and anxieties started gnawing at him. What if it hadn’t been enough? Sure, back then, he’d thought, _ oh yeah, this reeks of the excellence of youth_, but what if it wasn’t enough? It wasn’t just him, it was the entire group that would be scrutinized under the public gaze. If there was even a _ single _ one of them that made a mistake, it would bring the whole group down. 

But, looking at his members…all of them earned their spot in the group. None of them would bring the group down, Mark could absolutely attest to that; he’d seen them at work.

But what if _ he _ was the weak link? He was the leader, the one who was supposed to _ lead,_ to be the face of the group (well, uh, according to what the managers said anyway. Mark doesn’t exactly feel like the face of anything right now; he’s not even sure if he’s tangible anymore). If the leader didn’t do well, that would say a _ lot _about the group, regardless of how good the others were.

And that’s still not including the worry that was ingrained at the back of his mind since the start: would the public even _ like _them? Would they even take time out of their precious days and check one rookie idol group out? Time is fleeting after all, and not many people would give up their time just to see one idol group out of literally hundreds. What made them so different from the rest?

“Hey,” a quiet voice breaks him out of his thoughts. Fingers gently take hold of his earlobes.

Donghyuck looks back at him, eyes filled with poorly concealed worry. 

Mark doesn’t know what kind of face he’s making right now, but it’s enough to make Donghyuck huff and entangle himself in his space. Warmth seeps back into him, alarmingly so, because that’s _ Donghyuck_, that’s Donghyuck’s _ smell_, and he’s so close, _ too close,_ _way too close_— 

“Sorry,” Donghyuck apologizes, arms wrapping themselves around Mark’s torso, and it’s so distracting, it was like all of his senses were suddenly on fire, like the fight-or-flight response taking effect on _ every _ single one of his cells, but with Mark’s brain kicking up a fuss, screaming, _ fools, this is Lee Donghyuck, this is the chance we were waiting for, troops assemble! _

Wait, why was he apologizing? What for? Could he somehow read what was on Mark’s mind? Did he know that every single cell in his body was at war with one another just from his touch?

It’s damning. A single touch from _ him _could light his whole being on fire. And despite it all, despite all the hurt and the sting of betrayal, and all of the layers of lies, this was still him. Still Donghyuck. There was the bustling city of wonder, with the pitiful sewers swimming with venom, poised to engulf the city at whole at any given time. But then there was the skies above, and the sun that shone overhead, that told of a new dawn, of a new beginning each day. 

Perhaps he was being too sentimental, perhaps this was just the beginning of his emotions taking over him, and he, too weak, too privy to the brilliance of that fiery star, was chaining Donghyuck down with all of his feelings. 

Was Donghyuck tired of it? Being weighed down by all of his expectations must have been exhausting… 

Mark knew what it felt like, of course; having lived a life filled with an onslaught of expectations just piled up on him, one after another. Scurrying day by day, attempting to make sure all of them have been met. Going to bed, utterly exhausted and no idea of who or what he was supposed to be anymore. Living a life dictated by how others wanted, was a life he knew well. 

_Sorry. Sorry_ _for burdening you with my feelings._

Mark breaks off of that chain, the leash that he himself had thrown so selfishly at Donghyuck. He’ll do better. For him, Donghyuck had been that fresh spring breeze, the dawn of a new day. He’ll become that for Donghyuck too. By breaking those chains. 

“Mark?” Renjun’s cautious tone catches his attention.

Abruptly, Mark is brought back to the present, where everyone was currently staring at him with varying expressions of surprise and horror. He blinks back, utterly confused. “What?”

“You...just sent Donghyuck flying.”

He _ what. _

Mark, panicking, turns his head, only to see Donghyuck slumped against the wall, where a sizeable Donghyuck-sized dent had formed.

“Oh my god, oh my _ god,_” Mark rushes over to his side, tripping over himself in his haste. “Donghyuck, I’m so sorry—I didn't mean—are...are you alright?”

Donghyuck winces. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Just, warn a guy next time, okay? Oh man, my _ back_…”

“I—I’m sorry,” Mark croaks. Shame unfurls in his stomach as he hovers above Donghyuck, wanting so desperately to check him for any injury he might have sustained. Because of him. Donghyuck got hurt because of _ him_. 

“Mark, I’m fine,” Donghyuck insists, “I’m made of sturdier stuff, remember? I literally _ make _myself sturdy. Fancy DNA manipulation and everything, ring any bells?”

Nausea creeps into the back of his throat then, as Mark guiltily casts a glance at the dent on the wall. The force of the impact might have been enough to break the average person’s spine, may have even resulted in _ death_. The severity of his act, no matter how carelessly Donghyuck waves it off, is not lost on Mark. 

He _ hurt _ Donghyuck. 

“_Mark,_” Donghyuck grabs the sides of his head and turns it towards him, so that Mark has no choice but to face him. His eyes flash, for the quickest of seconds, a glimpse of gold spans his face—of his _ real _face, all smooth gold and daunting beauty—as though he’d briefly lost control of his power. Confusion marrs his features, along with the barest hint of panic. And, bubbling just under that...fear. 

Mark stumbles back, head reeling. There was a painful throb in his chest, loud and heavy, a hammering that couldn’t simply be attributed to an accelerated heartbeat.

It was gruesome, _monstrous_ even, something that shouldn’t be let outside, ever. Something that should be buried at all times. Hidden from the world it doesn't belong. 

“Mark, calm down…”

“What’s happening—_augh! _”

_ Stop it_, he hisses at—whatever it is that was inside him. It was thrashing wildly now, completely out of control, powerful courses of energy travelling through his veins. _ Don’t hurt them._

“Jaemin,” Mark rasps, eyes locking with the other boy’s. _Please_, he thinks. 

“I got it, hyung,” Jaemin’s soft voice echoes in the throes of his mind. Just as it does, the raging infierno ceases to a halt, into gentle crackles of a maintained flame. “Don’t worry.”

Just before darkness engulfs him, Mark remembers something urgent, something niggling at the back of his mind, before he decides, ah well, maybe it should be better left in the morning. He closes his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mark forgot about the debut mv lol (also, i keep making him sleep..? probably me projecting my wishes for everyone in nct to just _rest_)
> 
> on another note, what do you all think so far? do you think it's going just a bit too fast? i'm a little worried ahaha ;u; any feedback is welcome!


	7. doyoung pulls the plug

Mark opens his eyes to a world that is eternally, damnably dark. 

The endless darkness of the night creeps up on him as he blinks, slowly becoming accustomed to his surroundings. Fights back the weariness in his eyes and in his bones, at the phantom ache in the inner regions of his chest, where a roaring beast had been just moments ago. 

He was back. Back in the world he used to believe was real. In the world he had created, then chained himself to as a form of self-punishment for memories he didn’t have—memories that have been forcibly stolen from him.

_ Donghyuck, eyes ablaze in emotions he couldn’t quite read—or rather, he couldn’t bear to decipher—tore into him as his words wormed their way into Mark’s head. _

_ “Tell me, Donghyuck, is… is that how you really feel?” _

_ Donghyuck let out a hollow chuckle. “I’m not sure. Feelings don’t belong in mindless puppets like me. But,” he hesitated, eyes desperately trained on Mark’s, like he wanted to imprint the image into his head forever. _

_ “But you’re going to forget about this anyway,” Donghyuck carefully cradled his face, eyes fluttering as he closed the distance between them. “I’ll allow myself this one mistake. Just this one selfish mistake.” _

_ Their lips met, just the gentlest of touches, almost ghostly, and for only an instant. Because as soon as they met in a kiss, the world went dark. _

In a world he himself had created, he was free from the reigns of everyone else. Free from any imposed control on his mind. 

The implication of that last thought brought a bittersweet taste on his mouth. 

It was Donghyuck who had Jaemin erase his memories. But, it was _ Jaemin _ who had planted those false memories in his head. Did he do it because Donghyuck told him to? Or... did he do it out of his own volition?

But, Mark realizes, it won’t do to dwell on such thoughts. It would only serve to propagate mistrust amongst his friends. Those friends he would gladly end the world for, should the occasion arise. 

They were only pawns in this game of underhanded schemes and layered institutions that toyed with their fates. None of them had any semblance of control over their lives, and it was only Donghyuck who’d chosen to take it upon himself to construct a little sense of that control they’d been disbarred from. 

Mark starts as he accidentally stubs his toe against his bed frame. The yelp of pain that escapes his mouth comes out as a garble of mixed noises that only the ones in the worst of pains can make. 

He never realized just how unreal it was, the way it always seemed to be dark here, the way everything shone just a little duller. 

His room was startlingly empty, devoid of any personal taste of the inhabitants—as if he’d taken it upon himself to install the most basic of all furniture, save for the amazingly huge amounts of empty instant canned coffees littered around the place. 

(His one and only personality trait: an addiction to caffeine. And not even the sophisticated, expensive ones that Jaemin drinks so often, it was the god-awful ones in the cans.)

There was a phone on the floor. The screen was showing an aborted call to 119. 

It seemed so long ago, the sequence of events that kickstarted the rest of it all. Amazingly, it had all started with a vague, distorted memory of a dream. A dream that...came to life. In all its beguiling, enticing, red-headed, starry-eyed figure.

Mark sighs, dragging his eyes to his laptop, where it was open to an assignment he vaguely remembers stressing out over. 

It seemed so long ago, though...who can really tell? In a world where nothing else existed except for him, maybe time didn’t feel the need to keep itself updated.

He doesn’t even have a degree he’s studying for. At closer inspection, the assignment itself was a confusing mix of history and theory of music all jumbled together— 

_ “Mark,_"_ a soft, yet firm voice carries over to the room. Phantom hands caress his cheeks, though he knew it was only a phantom touch. No one has ever touched him. “Always remember to place people above you at all times. Make other people happy. That is your dream. Every thought that passes through your mind will only ever serve to bring happiness to other people.” _

_ He nods. That is his dream. _

A painful throb to his head (accompanying the painful throbbing of his toe) is enough to leave him with a gasp. _ What was that? _

A memory? Of his mother? That was his mother’s voice, there was no mistaking it...and yet, why did it bring him such...dread? 

Why… why was he unable to remember properly? This was _ his _ world, a world he had created. His domain, where only he can manipulate everything. 

It was kinda strange to think of it that way, embarrassing even, because he was essentially calling himself a _ god _, when he’s nowhere near that—he was just Mark. Just Mark with a throbbing head and toe, with a propensity to space out in the most awkward of situations. 

Well. Just Mark had some issues with memories then. Not even being a self-appointed ruler of his own domain could change that little problem. 

"_Mark." _

A sudden voice to his left alerts him of a presence in the room. Mark, with all the grace of a ruler of his own domain, flails his arms in surprise and bangs his elbow against the table, right at the ligament connecting his forearm and bicep, sending a jolt of pain down his arms. 

Cursing and clutching at his elbow, he whirls around to see who was the other person in the room. 

"Mark Lee, I did not carry you on my back for nine months and personally feed and clothe you for you to utter such vile profanities in my presence."

"Johnny," Mark gapes at the man standing before him.

"It is indeed I," Johnny agrees mildly. He grins at Mark, casually leaning against the doorframe of his room. For such a tall guy, Johnny could move as silently as a cat stalking its prey.

“I, uh, what...what are you…?” Mark stammers. 

“_Well_, I was supposed to be on my way to our weekly group study session, but you were eight minutes late. So, me being an aggravated big brother figure, I decided to break into your apartment because, again, aggravated big brother figure. And what do I find? A kidnapping scene!”

Mark straightens up. “I know about the Brotherhood.”

_ That _ makes Johnny pause. “Brotherhood?” He asks, puzzled.

“Brotherhood,” Mark repeats, suddenly unsure. The way Johnny was tilting his head in genuine confusion was making him lose confidence in his, for lack of a better word, _ theory_. That they were all in on this… scheme… that involved keeping him from the outside world…

The more Mark thinks about it, the more far fetched it sounded. But… it didn’t make any sense otherwise. What about all of the… memories he had with Dream?

Ah, but then again, memories were a fickle thing. They can be moved and manipulated with the slightest of touches from the most talented of telepaths. And he regularly hung around with one of said telepaths. Who’s to say this wasn’t all just a bizarre hallucination brought on by too much tampering with his brain? 

“You’ve gotta give me more details, man. I don’t remember signing up for any fraternities or anything like that,” Johnny says. He pauses. “Well, I don’t remember doing anything like that while I was _ sober_, at least.”

“You’re a member of Brotherhood, a mutant organization that—that—” _ What does Brotherhood stand for, anyway? _ “That goes against whatever SM goes for!” _ That sounds about right. _ “And so is Dongyoung! And all this time I’ve been living in this—this made-up world that _ I’ve _created because apparently I have this mind-blowing power that makes everything I think of come true!” 

Mark trails off, now feeling more unsure that ever. Every word out of his mouth sounds even more ridiculous than the last, like some kind of silly story only a madman could fabricate. 

“Mark?” Johnny tentatively waves one hand in front of him. “How many fingers am I holding? Just checking,” he adds at the dark look Mark shoots him, “Standard booze protocol. You’re looking a little unsteady there…”

“I don’t belong here,” Mark whispers the last truth he knows for certain. “I—I’m not sure _ where _ I...I belong. But I’m sure. I’m positive. Not here.”

Johnny falls silent. 

Mark tries to regain his breath. For some reason, he ended up on the floor, with his breathing getting more and more erratic. Did he blackout? 

Then, he hears steady footsteps come towards him. Johnny kneels down and, extending a warm hand, ruffles his hair.

“Y’know, for such a little guy, you’re filled with so much anxiety,” Johnny comments, “Yeah, I get it, though. Being tasked with a gargantuan task like saving the world can be a little bit overwhelming. Just a little bit.”

Mark lets out a choked laugh. “Just a bit.”

“Breathe, Mark,” Johnny gently chides, then continues in a low voice, “You weren’t supposed to know until you’ve gotten better at controlling your powers. The big guys have estimated another ten years until then.”

“So you _ are _a member of the Brotherhood! What the f—you were so sure you weren’t, though!”

Johnny shrugs. “Watching you freak out is one of my hobbies. Watching you have an anxiety attack, on the other hand, is decidedly _ not _ one of my hobbies,” he pauses, “this whole thing has been taking its toll on you, huh?”

At Mark’s nod, Johnny sighs and sits down beside him. 

“I can only imagine what it’s like, having to shoulder all of our hopes and dreams. By the looks of it, you were forced to, even before you came of age.”

“What do you mean?” Mark asks curiously.

“When I first joined Brotherhood, you were already there. _ Number 1999_, they named you. You were in this bigass glass tube, and you spent your days having to be fed with ‘information’” Johnny air quotes dryly, “about yourself. Day in and day out, they talked to you and made this whole life story, your supposed background.” 

That memory of his mother…

“They had this big master plan of fabricating your life, and sending you to SM. To the center of everything corrupt in the system. It’s pretty stupid, but they were convinced that if you were exposed to it, you could potentially change it from the inside,” Johnny says, “Among other things. But mostly they just wanted to expose you to as much information and data about the world as possible. Enrolling you in SM was like the ultimate simulation experiment.”

“Like a puppet,” Mark says distantly. 

“Like a puppet,” Johnny agrees, eyeing him carefully. “Donghyuck, one of our elite members, was sent with you. His mission was to oversee that the plan was going well. In other words, he was there to make sure you had a miserable time.

“Ten volunteered to go too,” Johnny chuckles, “The big guys didn’t want him to, but the guy just went ahead and did it anyway. He says and I quote, ‘I don’t trust that brat to do this properly’ but I figure he did it out of pure concern for the kid.”

Mark says nothing, just continues staring at the wall across them. 

Johnny nudges him. “Hey, don’t go all puppet mode on me, little man. I still need to expose all of our secrets.”

“I just,” Mark sighs, “I...it’s been a long week, Johnny.”

“I know,” is what Johnny says, before engulfing him in a hug, in a true aggravating big brother fashion. “‘Everything I’ve ever known is a lie’,” he says in a false high-pitched voice once they separate, “that must be what you’re thinking right now, right?”

“I do _ not _ sound like that—”

“But your _ vibe _ sounds like that. Anyway, you’re not wrong. You’re not right either.”

“Can you please try not to sound like a wise old mentor, you just can’t pull it off—”

“Truth is,” Johnny continues loudly, “that we care about you, Mark. There are some of us who actually want you to live your own life, instead of being dictated on what to do. Sure, you have this overpowered superpower that can possibly change the course of fate as we know it, and is vital to humanity's survival, and in the wrong hands, could wipe out the existence of this very world, but, well, whatever. We care about _ you_, Mark.”

“Which is why you had Donghyuck taunt me into creating an alternate world?” Mark finishes doubtfully. That was one thing that didn’t quite fit with the storyline.

“Okay, well, full disclosure: that was entirely Donghyuck’s doing,” Johnny amends, “man, did that cause a _ mess _ in the headquarters. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with keeping you safe and stuff like that. Because he might as well have said, ‘oooh I fell in love with my mission so I did this incredibly stupid thing to keep him safe even though it got me in serious trouble with the big boss’. Congrats, by the way. He’s a catch.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mark lies, his face burning. 

“Ohhhkay, I see we're in the in denial pining phase of the story.”

“Stop it,” Mark groans, covering his face amidst Johnny’s laughter. A smile was starting to tug on his lips, and for a second, he actually feels alright. Like, sure, he was in deep shit he couldn’t even hope to understand, but being with Johnny like this, laughing and teasing each other, reminded him of the old times. 

It made him feel secure. Stable. Like he could stand up again. 

When his face stopped burning, and Johnny’s laughter subsided, they fall into a contemplative silence.

“So what now?” Mark breaks the silence. “You told me all of that, which I’m really grateful for, by the way, it answers a lot of questions I had. But...what now? And what about you? Won’t that put you in trouble?”

Johnny grins. “You go back to your world, of course. You did tell me you didn’t belong here, right? Let’s start with that. And as for me...ah, well. Having the ability to teleport has its benefits when you’re on the run.”

“And with that magnificently awful plan in mind,” Johnny stands up and, bowing, waves his hand with a flourish. A swirling vortex appears by his side, like it was ripped across time and space. “Want a ride?” 

Mark takes a deep breath and nods. “Yeah.”

  
*

He opens his eyes to a world that is completely, damnably messy.

Before he could even open his eyes, the noise was what alerted him that he was, indeed, back at the very world he’d tried to leave. 

“_Mark! _”

“Oh, thank _ fuck_. I thought I was going insane from our debut and completely vaporized Mark hyung into oblivion.”

“Jeno hyung, how is that even possible. _ What even is your power_, I still don’t get it—”

Mark slowly sits up. He had stepped into the threshold of Johnny’s vortex, but not before the older guy decided he was actually a ten-year old in a gigantic body and proceeded to stick his foot out, tripping Mark in the process so that he landed on his butt. Again. 

All six pairs of very worried looking eyeballs stared at him, tracking his every movement. A feeling of helpless fondness suddenly erupts inside his chest at the sight, and with it, a strong feeling of protectiveness, like he would do all that it would take, just so he could keep this, keep _ them_. 

“Hey guys,” Mark smiles, “I’m back. What’s up?”

A demonic shriek enters his eardrums then, as Donghyuck swivels a weak fist at his side. Mark says ‘weak’ but he actually means ‘strong, like super duper strong, owie kind of weak’. 

“You do _ not _ get to poof out like that,” Donghyuck fumes, as Mark gingerly rubs his bicep. _ Owie_. “Actually, you know what, I don’t care if you’re mad at me, I’m just going to latch onto you like a _ leech _ so that you never pull that kind of stunt like that ever again.”

“I'm sorry?” Mark tries, as Donghyuck makes true to his promise and latches onto his arm. 

“Hyung, where did you _ go?_” Chenle demands. “One minute, you were going completely ballistic and punched Donghyuck to the wall, and then it was like _ bleurgh! Boom! _And then you disappeared! For like an hour!”

“We thought it was your villain origin story,” Renjun jokes weakly. 

“He would make a completely sucky villain. Did you see how he tripped when he got out of that portal?” 

“Before that,” Mark interjects, as the rest of them erupts into an argument about the comparative aspects of clumsiness and truly vile, villainous deeds and how it may or may not correlate, “do you guys want to play chess?”

Translation: I need to talk to you guys about something that should not be heard by anyone in SM. 

They all seem to catch his meaning, and after a brief moment where they exchange confused looks with each other, nod. 

*

In the gardens, where the entrance for the loading pod is, Mark tries to ignore the Donghyuck-sized leech on his arm as he leads them to a place in the game where they won’t get skewered by the chess pieces. 

He settles on an innocent-looking gazebo by the far side of the map, probably programmed by the game designer for the purpose of having secret dates, judging by the flurry of heart-shaped flowers and vines decorating the place. With warring chess pieces wrecking havoc in the background. Real romantic.

“So,” he says as he settles himself in the center of the gazebo, surrounded by the rest of them, all staring at him curiously. “I have something to tell you about my...circumstances. I figure some of you may know the whole story, but others might not, so...I’ll start from the beginning.”

And so he re-tells everything he can piece together, added information from Johnny, and the little bits of memories that have returned to him as fragments, leaving out some bits like that kiss he shared with Donghyuck before...the two year-timeskip. 

“That’s that,” Mark finally sits down, a little parched. He wasn’t used to talking too much. 

All of them were staring at him, open-mouthed. Sans Donghyuck, who mostly just looked resigned.

"Hold up," Renjun holds up one hand, looking extremely baffled. "Let's run over the sequence of events real quick. So, first off, you're secretly a social project—sorry, _experiment—_Brotherhood created."

Mark nods.

"And it's their fault you have this all-powerful mutant ability...reality warping, was it?"

Mark exchanges a look with Donghyuck, who was the only person there who possibly knew more about their situation than he did. Donghyuck shrugs, as if to say, _you're on your own, pal._ Mark bristles at the utter betrayal. 

"I don't know all the details behind the experiment," Mark begins slowly, "Just that I was apparently the latest one."

But Renjun was on a roll now. He _lived_ and _breathed_ elaborate sci-fi storylines. There was no stopping him. "And they've also brainwashed you into becoming this incredibly selfless person so that you will never turn against humanity."

"Right, right," Mark nods vigorously.

"That's where Donghyuck comes in," Renjun nods at the morose-looking Donghyuck, "To—uh, what, exactly? So, like, Donghyuck's an _elite_ member of the Brotherhood. And he gets sent on this very important mission with Mark to—?"

Donghyuck heaves a sigh. “It’s true, I was...sent by the Brotherhood. To ensure that Mark gets shit handed to him almost everyday while also _ trying _ to maintain his outlook on life.”

“This is kind of crazy,” Renjun mutters, a curious glint in his eyes. “So what you’re saying is. They know you’re housing the very power that could rule _ or _ destroy us. Or—well, they’ve conducted all sorts of experiments to ensure that you _ do _ house it. They’ve cultivated you to ensure that you’re never going to turn against humanity.”

“Pretty much,” Mark confirms.

“And where does SM factor in all of this? Why go through all the trouble of enrolling you in a school that could potentially threaten your life? I mean—we _are_ talking about SM here...” 

“I can answer that,” Donghyuck volunteers, “SM is the central mutant organization. Through them, they have access to millions of data concerning mutants all over the world. Not only that, they have hundreds and thousands of students enrolled at their institution. By enrolling Mark and exposing him to all of the mutant abilities and powers, he can gather enough data, enough information, to eventually wield those powers himself. His ability, even though it's classified as "reality warping", is actually only at its earliest stage."

"Its earliest stage," Chenle repeats, tilting his head. "What does that mean?"

"Ugh, I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask about this," Donghyuck says, scratching the back of his head. "I barely listened to the scientists who gave the comprehensive report on his...Mark-ness. So I only know just the very basic idiot-friendly version. Basically, if he exposes himself to as many mutants as possible, he'll be able to harness their powers for himself. As he gradually gets access more and more mutant abilities, that will be enough to unlock the reality warping stage. The final stage."

"But his power got out of control two years ago," Jeno guesses, "What triggered it?"

Mark glances at Jaemin, who was paying close attention to every word. According to Jaemin, he'd removed the psychic barriers that held back the enourmous energy inside Mark that was supposed to have been left alone. But even before that, he'd mentioned that the reason he was able to remove said psychic barriers in the first place was because it was already getting weak.

"I'm not sure," Mark admits. "I guess we'll have to find that out another day. That part, the part with the mission and the Brotherhood thing? I _still_ don't understand what's going on and how it correlates with me and my memories."

"I can fill in the blanks," Donghyuck says, blinks, then backtracks, "Or, well, I'll try my best to. Since everything's out in the open anyway. No point in keeping secrets," he takes a deep breath, "Right. So. Brotherhood created the ultimate weapon, the vessel that was supposed to house the power that could rule _or_ destroy us. That's Mark."

"We've established that, yes."

"He was raised in an artificial environment, where they essentially molded him into this...kid who had the world's best interests at heart. That was to ensure that he would _never_ ever turn against humanity. Of course, that meant fabricating his memories and planting false information about his background, his family, and the like, into his head."

"That," Jeno winces, "that's pretty...cruel. Even if it's at the expense of the entire world. Did they mean to make him as, like, some sort of deity?"

Donghyuck shakes his head. "Definitely not. They were planning to use him as their last resort against whatever it is SM's planning. But we don’t know _ what _ SM wants. All we know is that they’re planning an all-out war between mutants and humans.”

“_What? _”

“That’s their whole deal. By virtue of hiding behind the facade of an educational institution, they place us in a world separate from the outside world. Remember all those ridiculous rules and regulations we had to stand by? It all had to do with forcing us inside rather than outside, and they effectively control our WiFi, which means that _ they _ get to control what we see in the internet.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Mark holds up his hands, “Um, can we go back to the ‘all-out war between humans and mutants’ part? I think that’s a pretty, um, important part.”

“Oh,” Donghyuck says sheepishly, “yeah. So, uh. Right. The Mark Experiment wasn’t solely just for Mark. I’m here to find out just what exactly SM plans on doing. And over the years, I’ve gathered enough data and information to find out that they’ve been placing their SM alumni in high areas like in the government, research facilities, and the military. So far, I think almost everyone in the government has been replaced by SM alumni, or should I say, agents. All to fan the flames of revolution. Researchers have been publishing research material about supposed ‘x-genes’ in certain humans with remarkable ability—mutants—for some time now. It’s only a matter of time before they make this public information.

“I’ve been sleuthing around and impersonating other people and feeding them false information to buy us enough time, but they’re showing no signs of stopping.”

“Wait, all this time?” Jisung gapes at him. “You’ve been doing that all this time?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Huh,” Jisung leans back against the seat, flabbergasted. “He’s actually cool. Donghyuck hyung is actually cool...whaddaya know…”

“This is bigger than all of us can possibly imagine,” Jeno says slowly, “we’re talking about billions of people’s lives. And their only plan is to hope Mark can save everyone?”

“I know, Jeno,” Donghyuck says gently. Just then, Mark catches sight of Jeno’s fist, white-knuckled and gripping the seams of his shirt tightly. “I know,” Donghyuck repeats, more firmly, “which is why we have to proceed with caution. We can’t just bank all those people’s lives on Mark’s power. It isn’t fair for them, and it isn’t fair for Mark, either.”

Mark feels some tension leave his body. It hadn’t even occurred to him, how deep in shit he really was, in the circumstances he grew up in. Being involved in a war outbreak—worse, being their only chance of survival—wasn’t exactly something normal kids his age found themselves in.

He didn’t realize it, but shouldering literally the entire world’s burdens, and with the addition of being their own little ragtag group’s leader, it really took a toll on him. Johnny was right. 

Hearing Donghyuck speak with so much hope, so much confidence, like he had some kind of plan...it made him feel lighter. Like the burden didn’t rest solely on his shoulders. Actually, it goes for all of them. For some reason, being around the people he trusted the most, it made him feel infinitely lighter. 

“Do you have some kind of plan?” Marks asks Donghyuck hopefully.

Donghyuck snorts at the face Mark was making (probably a goofy-looking face brimming with hope). “Are you kidding me? Of course I don’t. _ But_,” he enunciates, just as Mark was beginning to wilt, “but we’re not the only ones in on it. We’ve got an entire organization on our side. It’s not just us against the world.”

“Does Brotherhood have something planned?” Jaemin speaks up, and Mark jumps. He’d been so silent, Mark had almost forgotten he was there. 

Donghyuck looks up towards the skies, seemingly in thought. “No, not yet,” he says decisively, “but soon. They will. They _ better_,” his face darkens, and for a moment, Mark thinks there’s something else in his face, a story for another day.

Chenle stifles a yawn, and Donghyuck zooms in on it like a mother hen. “Okay, children, it’s bedtime. It has been _ a day_. We debuted, I got punched, Mark disappeared, we’re going to war, yeah. It’s been a day. C’mon, let’s get some sleep.”

Oh, riiight. Debut. They’re an idol group. Mark could slap himself for forgetting that very important facet of information. 

“How did the music video go?” He asks hurriedly.

“Oh, it went superbly well,” Renjun informs him, “it’s been two hours, but we’ve already got 1.5 million views. It’s great. And also a little scary. But I’m so sleepy I can hardly even hear my inner demons screaming about how much of a scam it might be so...night!”

“I kinda wanted to watch with you guys,” Mark shyly mumbles. 

“We didn’t watch it either,” Chenle says, grinning, “we all agreed it would be pretty weird to watch it, what with you disappearing and all. Also, Irene says it would be a great idea to film us reacting to it for the first time. So! Tomorrow!”

A warm feeling floods through his chest. Mark watches as, one by one, they say their goodbyes and lazily log off, chatting about something or the other. It was nice. Having friends and...having actual feelings. Very nice. He wouldn’t trade this for the world.

“So!” Donghyuck coughs, interrupting him from having actual feelings. Donghyuck smiles warmly at him, “and then there were two.”

Mark opens his mouth to say—something, he wasn’t exactly sure, probably something stupid like “your eyes look like stars” but Donghyuck cuts him off again.

“And we’re having a very emotionally charged moment, which I’m _ way _ too tired for, by the way, so if it’s alright with you, I think it’s safe to call a truce for now.”

“Truce?” Mark repeats, confused.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck affirms, sticking out a hand. “Friends?”

They’ve always been friends, even with everything being the way it was. At least, Mark thinks. They’ve had their spats, of course, and they always managed to resolve it with Mark doing his best to not sound like a petulant child, and with Donghyuck slowly coaxing him out of whatever stupor he’s in. It worked for them.

“Of course,” Mark says softly, clutching his hand with both of his. “Always.”

Donghyuck stares at him, wide-eyed, before looking away with a flush. “Y’know what, fuck it, let’s have this emotionally charged moment. Make me cry or whatever.”

Words. Words are something Mark’s good at. Not exactly with speaking them out loud, but… he’s written about the boy beside him for so long, somehow the words just come to him naturally. And besides, Donghyuck has seen him in his trashiest, most terrible, drool on the corner of his mouth, state. It seems silly to worry about _ appearances _ when it was just the two of them.

“Have I ever made you cry before?” Mark asks, genuinely curious.

“Yeah, sometimes I lie in bed thinking about how the world depends on you, the world’s dorkiest loser, and I just cry myself to sleep.”

“Yeah, same.”

The both of them chuckle, then fall quiet.

“I wanted you to have your own life,” Donghyuck admits quietly, after a few minutes of idly staring at nothing, “you’ve literally been cultivated for this, to become the ultimate weapon. But,” he continues, “even though they told me you were only a vessel, an empty husk of a weapon that was only ever going to be used for the good of the world, you still managed to _ live _. To become your own person."

“I didn’t,” Mark finds it in him to croak. “I don’t.” _ You were the one who gave me my voice. _“It was all thanks to you.”

“No,” Donghyuck disagrees. “It was all you, Mark. Despite all of these people around you pumping you with beliefs, dreams, and thoughts that didn’t belong to you, you—you resisted. You had your own soul, and it wasn’t right. It isn’t right. It’s not right to take that away from you.”

_ All I ever wanted was you _, Mark thinks.

“You know, I used to be like that too,” Donghyuck says.

“Like what? A soulless, mindless empty husk of a man?”

“Yeah, especially the mindless part. I was exactly like a _ Sims _ character. I was always just following orders, y’know? I joined the Brotherhood at the tender age of ten years old. Hardly the age for making important life decisions that could change your fate. So, day after day was just me going around and becoming a different person, depending on the mission. I don’t think I even talked to anyone besides my direct superior for at least a year.”

Mark couldn’t imagine that. The Donghyuck at present was someone you could strangle for being so mischievous, and so charming he could possibly even charm a slug. Case in point: Mark. 

“But then, I received my mission. Your name was 1999, meaning you were the 1999th person to have been experimented on,” Donghyuck shudders, and Mark feels a cold sensation prickling at the back of his neck. “It was sick, the way they were just playing around with people’s lives like that. Even though their whole doctrine was about equality in both humans and mutants, they were just willing to experiment on innocent lives like that. Mutant lives, at that."

“What...kind of experiments would they do?” Mark ventures. 

Donghyuck hesitates. “I’m not sure, I wasn’t important enough to get access to the labs so I can’t say for sure what goes on in there. All I know is that, when I met you, and had a good look at your eyes, I remember thinking, ‘yup, this one’s definitely an empty vessel’.” 

“Not a very good first impression then?” Mark says weakly. 

“On the contrary, I thought you were a really cute kid. The way you followed everyone’s orders and smiled so widely whenever you met their expectations reminded me of a little puppy,” Donghyuck laughs fondly. “But then you started taking an interest in your classes, particularly music, and then—this light in your eyes—it made me think. That maybe you were just like us. Thrust into something you had absolutely no control over.

“I wanted to see a world that didn’t hold anything against anyone for being born who they were,” he continues, “That’s the entire reason I joined the Brotherhood. But, in creating that world, that meant using you for our own selfish agenda. Even though it could prevent an all-out war, I didn’t think it was right, to entrust you with the happiness of billions of people.

“Maybe this is _ my _ villain origin story,” Donghyuck chuckles mirthlessly. “Imagine sacrificing the lives of all those people just for the sake of wanting to let you live your own life. Truly a villainous act.”

“Is that why you… pushed me away? Two years ago?

At his nod, Mark feels a prick of anger. “It wasn’t what _ I _ wanted,” he says angrily, “you say you wanted me to have my own life. But...you didn’t even _ ask _ me. You just decided on your own! And for what? For you to feel like you’re some kind of hero? What about all those people?”

“A hero, huh,” Donghyuck hums, closing his eyes. He had light brown hair today. Unlike them, he could change his appearance at will, and thus had no need for any major stylistic changes like hair dyeing. “I guess I wanted to be a hero. Just once. Because… you reminded me of the kids I used to know.”

“Kids?” 

Donghyuck nods, glancing down at his hand, which was still captured in both of Mark’s. “Jaemin and I met in an orphanage,” he says shortly, as if that could explain the myriad of questions that appeared in Mark’s mind. 

“Even though they were so sure you could solve all of their problems, I didn’t think so. I think their solution was the easy way out. Force the kid to take the blame for billions of people suffering from their actions,” Donghyuck snorts derisively. “There’s another way out now, I know. And I’m only getting started.”

The fiery determination in his eyes was captivating. It was like he could bend reality itself just by uttering mere words. 

“Okay,” Mark, against his better judgement, gives in. “I trust you.”

Donghyuck looks at him, and to his surprise, suddenly starts dabbing at his eyes. When he speaks, it’s with a noticeably thick voice. “Thanks, Mark. That… actually means a lot to me. And,” he hiccups, “I just wanted...you to be selfish. To have aspirations of your own. You were never going to get that, not in this world. Not with me, not with SM, not with Brotherhood.”

_ I only ever wanted you_. 

“Hey, I’m practically an adult now,” Mark says, thoroughly distracted by the way Donghyuck’s eyes were shining underneath the light, the tears looking like tiny little crystals in the corner of his eyes. One of them trailed down to his lips. “I think I’m old enough to do what I want.”

“Somehow I find it really difficult to look at you and think, ‘oh wow, now _ this _ one right here’s an adult’,” Donghyuck chuckles wetly. 

“I’m an _ adult _adult,” Mark says. More crystalline tears were trailing down Donghyuck’s cheeks. He wanted nothing more than to wipe them off. “I know, uh, taxes, and stuff. I think.”

“Oh yeah?” Donghyuck challenges, a strange gleam in his eyes. Something like hope, maybe. 

“Definitely. Having a vague idea of taxes is the epitome of adulthood,” Mark murmurs, inching closer. His hands were coming up to cup both of Donghyuck’s cheeks, thumbs slowly wiping away the tear tracks.

“Mark,” Donghyuck whispers, frozen. “What are you doing?”

“Paying my dues,” Mark replies, not even fully aware of what he was saying any more. _ Who _ just ups and talks about _ taxes _ while shooting their shot? “You kissed me. Back then. Right before I went and created that alternate world.”

Donghyuck groans, face pink. “Oh my _ god_. Of course you had to remember that. Of course, of _ fucking _course.”

“I was thinking,” Mark says casually, “I’m a mindless puppet, _ you’re _ a mindless puppet. We could be great together.”

“Mindless puppet squad,” Donghyuck laughs, helplessly, “We’re going to need at least one brain cell, y’know. For like, doing actual activities that involve actually thinking. Zero plus zero is still zero.”

“Or we could just stand around and wait for someone else to instruct us, _ Sims_-style.”

Donghyuck laughs harder, the kind of bubbling laughter that erupts from his chest and makes him go out of breath. Like this, it was easy to imagine that they were just coming out of the classroom after a day’s lecture, just casually hanging out and discussing whatever passing thought came to mind, no matter how nonsensical. 

Happy. It made Mark feel happy. Like he was at home. 

“Donghyuck,” Mark says, sighing, leaning his head against the other’s shoulder. _ It’s now or never. _“I really, really li—”

Just then, the world goes black. 

Well. Not exactly. He still had Donghyuck by his side; he could still feel him pressed against him. 

“We’re being forcibly ejected from the game,” Donghyuck says tightly. The warmth disappears from beside him, as Donghyuck stands alert. 

Panic starts to flood Mark’s system. “We were found out?”

“Seems so,” Donghyuck’s voice says. Hands wrap themselves around Mark’s wrist, tugging him. “Get behind me. We don’t know who’s behind this. The only one who may have some kind of idea that we’re here is Irene, and I know for a fact that she’s off doing the paperwork she’s neglected to do until the last minute.”

Seconds passed by agonizingly slowly. The world, dark as it is (it seems like Mark is always being plunged into darkness no matter what, what gives?!), comes back to focus as they find themselves back in the real world. 

Mark’s eyes take some time to adjust, and he lets out a noise of disbelief as soon as they do. 

Because—holding a plug in hand, evidently responsible for evicting them out of the hyper realistic gaming system, was—was—

“Doyoung?” Donghyuck sounds absolutely bewildered. “What are you doing here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **(11) Doyoung: Self-Duplication**  
The ability to create exact copies of themselves.
> 
> _Dream TMI: There was a time when Donghyuck and Doyoung (the copy, not the original) were paired up on a mission in the snowy mountains of the Himalayas. There was a brief moment of chaos, and in that moment, as they made their getaway, Donghyuck realized he had left Doyoung the copy behind. Doyoung the original says that the copy has now found his place in the wilderness._

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts? no thoughts at all? ME TOO
> 
> be sure to hit me up in the comments if you ever feel the urge to get something off your chest hehe!


End file.
